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VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Christian hope and faith in the afterlife mean
the sting of losing a loved one does not have to leave behind a
poisonous venom in our lives, Pope Francis said.
“Our loved ones have not disappeared into dark nothingness: Hope
assures us that that they are in God’s good and strong hands. Love is
stronger than death,” he said at his general audience June 17.
As part of a series of talks about the family and problems they face,
the pope looked at death, particularly the loss of a close family
member.
When a loved one dies, especially a child or a parent of young
children, “death is never able to appear as something natural,” he said.
It is “heart-rending” when a mother and father lose a child: “It’s as
if time has stopped. An abyss opens that swallows up the past and the
future,” he said.
Losing a child seems to go against everything life is supposed to be
about, he said. “It’s a slap in the face to all the promises, gifts, and
sacrifices of love joyously given to the life we have given birth to,”
he said.
Just as traumatic is when a child loses one or both parents, he said.
They ask, “Where is daddy? Where is mommy?'” or “‘When will mommy
come back home?’ Oh, what do you say? The child suffers” and he or she
lacks the experience or understanding “to give a name to what has
happened,” the pope said.
These experiences of death are particularly distressing — “like a
black hole that opens in the life of a family and for which we don’t
know how to give any explanation.”
Sometimes family members will blame God. “I understand. They get mad
at God, they curse him,” or begin to question or doubt his existence,
the pope said.
“This anger is a bit of what comes from the heart of huge heartache” of losing a family member, he said.
Unfortunately, death has a number of evil “accomplices, who are even
worse” and their names are hatred, envy, pride, greed, indifference —
basically “the sin of the world that works for death and makes it even
more painful and unjust.”
Death’s “auxiliary forces” render so many families helpless and, so
often, such horror in some parts of the world starts to seem like an
“absurd normality.”
“May the Lord free us from getting used to this” kind of loss of life, he said.
For the people of God, death never has the last word, the pope said.
However, it still takes an enormous amount of love to face “the darkness
of death.”
Pope Francis reflects on death
He asked that today’s priests and all Christians find ways to better
express what the faith means when facing the death of a loved one.
People need to mourn, “you must never deny people the right to cry,” he said.
Christians must become “accomplices” of love, armed with the faith
and able to help families navigate the “very difficult path of death as
well as the sure path of the Lord, crucified and risen, with his
irreversible promise of resurrection.”
The Lord will reunite everyone once again, and it is this Christian
hope and faith that will “protect us from a nihilistic view of death as
well as false worldly consolation,” myths or superstition, he said.
The pope reminded people that June 20 marked World Refugee Day, and
he asked people pray for all those forced to flee as they search for a
new home “where they can live without fear.”
He asked that the dignity of refugees always be respected and
encouraged the international community to cooperate and work effectively
to “prevent the causes of forced migrations.”
“I invite everyone to ask forgiveness for the people and institutions
that close the doors to these people who are seeking a family, who want
to be cared for,” he said to applause.
Editor's
Note: So many of us are like Martha today: “Help me understand this
one, Jesus.” We doubt and yet we trust. Jesus weeps. He weeps with the
families of the fallen in Charleston. He weeps with a grieving
community. He weeps for them. He weeps with you. He weeps for you. How
does it make you feel to know that Jesus weeps over human tragedy? What
does it mean that Jesus weeps “with” us? What does it mean that Jesus
weeps “for” us?
The community at FaithGateway lifts up prayers today for the
people of Charleston. We’ve selected the reading below, “Jesus Weeps,”
by Max Lucado and hope it brings some comfort to you, the people of
Charleston, and to all those facing tragic circumstances around the
world.
- - -
Read John 11:1-44, The Death of Lazarus
You
never know what to say at funerals. This one is no exception. The
chapel is library quiet. People acknowledge each other with soft smiles
and nods. You say nothing.
What’s to be said? There’s a dead body in the place, for crying
out loud! Just last month you took the guy out to lunch. You and Lazarus
told jokes over nachos. Aside from a bad cough, you thought he was
healthy.
Within a week you learned of the diagnosis. The doctor gave him
sixty days. He didn’t make it that long. Now you’re both at his funeral.
He in the casket. You in the pew. Death has silenced you both.
The
church is full, so you stand at the back. Stained glass prisms the
afternoon sun, streaking faces with shafts of purple and gold. You
recognize many of them. Bethany is a small town. The two women on the
front pew you know well. Martha and Mary are the sisters of Lazarus.
Quiet, pensive Mary. Bustling, busy Martha. Even now she can’t sit
still. She keeps looking over her shoulder. Who for? you wonder.
In a matter of moments the answer enters. And when He does, she
rushes up the aisle to meet Him. Had you not known His name, the many
whispers would have informed you. “It’s Jesus.” Every head turns.
He’s wearing a tie, though you get the impression He rarely does.
His collar seems tight and His jacket dated. A dozen or so men follow
Him; some stand in the aisle, others in the foyer. They have a well-traveled, wrinkled look, as if they rode all night. Jesus
embraces Martha, and she weeps. As she weeps, you wonder. You wonder
what Jesus is going to do. You wonder what Jesus is going to say. He
spoke to the winds and the demons. Remarkable. But death? Does he have
anything to say about death?
Your thoughts are interrupted by Martha’s accusation:
Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. — John 11:21
You can’t fault her frustration. Are she and Jesus not friends? When
Jesus and His followers had nowhere else to go, “Martha welcomed them
into her home” (Luke 10:38). Mary and Martha know Jesus. They know Jesus
loves Lazarus. “Lord,” they told the courier to tell him, “the one you
love is very sick” (John 11:3). This is no fan-mail request. This is a
friend needing help.
Desperately needing help. The Greek language has two principle
words to express sickness: one describes the presence of a disease, the
other its effects. Martha uses the latter. A fair translation of her
appeal would be, “Lord, the one you love is sinking fast.”
Friends send Christ an urgent appeal in a humble fashion, and what
does he do? “He stayed where he was for the next two days and did not
go to them” (John 11:6). By the time He arrives, Martha
is so broken up she hardly knows what to say. With one breath she
rebukes: “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died”
(John 11:21). With the next she resolves:
But even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You. — John 11:22
Every funeral has its Marthas. Sprinkled among the bereaved are the bewildered.
Help me understand this one, Jesus.
This
has been the prayer of Karen Burris Davis ever since that November
morning when her son — and, consequently, her sun — failed to rise.
Jacob was thirteen. The picture of health. Four medical examiners have
found no cause of death. Her answer, she says, is no answer.
I miss Jacob so much that I am not sure I can do this. I stand
at the cemetery, knowing his body is down there, and think how insane
it is to feel like if I start digging, I could see him just one more
time. I just so much want to smell his hair and touch him... How quickly
the scent of someone goes away. I would have thought it would have
lingered forever, that sour boy smell and those stinky tennis shoes. Of
course, sometimes he actually did smell of soap and shampoo. The house
is so empty without all his noise and plans.
"Grief
fogs in the heart like a Maine-coast morning. The mourner hears the
waves but sees no water. Detects voices but no faces. The life of the
brokenhearted becomes that of a “footwatcher, walking through airports
or the grocery store staring at feet, methodically moving through a
misty world. One foot, then the other.” (Billy Sprague, Letter to a Grieving Heart: Comfort and Hope for Those Who Hurt)
Martha sat in a damp world, cloudy, tearful. And Jesus sat in it with her.
I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die like everyone else, will live again. — John 11:25
Hear those words in a Superman tone, if you like. Clark Kent
descending from nowhere, ripping shirt and popping buttons to reveal the
S beneath. “I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE!!!” Do you see a Savior
with Terminator tenderness bypassing the tearsof Martha and Mary and, in doing so, telling them and all grievers to buck up and trust?
I don’t. I don’t because of what Jesus does next.
He weeps.
He sits on the pew between Mary and Martha, puts an arm around
each, and sobs. Among the three, a tsunami of sorrow is stirred; a
monsoon of tears is released. Tears that reduce to streaks the watercolor conceptions of a cavalier Christ. Jesus weeps.
He weeps with them.
He weeps for them.
He weeps with you.
He weeps for you.
He weeps so we will know: Mourning is not disbelieving.
Flooded eyes don’t represent a faithless heart. A person can enter a cemetery Jesus-certain of life after death
and still have a Twin Tower crater in the heart. Christ did. He wept,
and he knew he was ten minutes from seeing a living Lazarus!
And
His tears give you permission to shed your own. Grief does not mean you
don’t trust; it simply means you can’t stand the thought of another day
without the Jacob or Lazarus of your life.
If Jesus gave the love, He understands the tears. So grieve, but
don’t grieve like those who don’t know the rest of this story.
Jesus touches Martha’s cheek, gives Mary a hug, stands,
and turns to face the corpse. The casket lid is closed. He tells Martha
to have it opened. She shakes her head and starts to refuse but then
pauses. Turning to the funeral home director, she says, “Open it.”
Since
you are standing, you can see the face of Lazarus. It’s waxy and white.
You think Jesus is going to weep again. You never expect Him to speak
to his friend. But He does. A few feet from the casket Jesus yells,
Lazarus, come out! — John 11:43
Preachers always address the living. But
the dead? One thing is sure. There better be a rumble in that casket,
or this preacher is going to therapy. You and everyone else hear the
rumble. There is movement in the coffin.
He who had died came out. — John 11:44
Dead men don’t do that — do they? Dead men don’t come out. Dead
men don’t wake up. Dead hearts don’t beat. Dried blood doesn’t rush.
Empty lungs don’t inhale. No, dead men don’t come out — unless they hear
the voice of the Lord of life. The ears of the dead may be deaf to your
voice and mine but not to His. Christ is
Lord of both the dead and the living. — Romans 14:9
When Christ speaks to the dead, the dead listen.
Indeed, had Jesus not addressed Lazarus by name, the tenant of
every tomb on earth would have stepped forth. Lazarus jolts up in the
coffin, blinks, and looks around the room as if someone carted him there
during a nap. A woman screams. Another faints. Everyone shouts. And
you? You learned something. You learned what to say at funerals.
You learned there is a time to say nothing. Your words can’t dispel a fog, but your presence can warm it. And your words can’t give a Lazarus back to his sisters. But God’s can. And it’s just a matter of time before He speaks.
The
Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout... All
the Christians who have died will rise from their graves. — 1 Thessalonians 4:16
Till then, we grieve, but not like those who have no hope.
And we listen. We listen for His voice. For we know who has the final say about death.
