Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter

Lectionary: 294

Amen, amen, I say to you,
you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices;
you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.”

Describing himself as both the true gate and the good shepherd, Jesus says, “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”

Because we hold the cross of Jesus always before us, we know that full, abundant life is not always pleasant. We also must weep and mourn. Kahlil Gibran, in his book of poetry, The Prophet, wrote of joy and sorrow:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

I read this book as a high school student at Mount Saint Francis almost fifty years ago. Gibran’s teaching on joy and sorrow has especially shaped my understanding of life.

Naturally we prefer joy but those who shun sorrow and grief have to avoid all human contact with its pleasures and privileges. Life in its fullness knows every human emotion. Searching for ways to express abundant life, we turn to poetry and song, dance, music and the visual arts. We sing the blues to make us happy; we turn to comedy to make us think. Perhaps that’s why people love horror films; they make them feel more secure.

Christians use all these natural ways of expression. To have life more abundantly we also contemplate our sins and our concupiscence. The more I realize the idiocy, meanness and futility of my sins the more I appreciate God’s mercy. I might suppose God loves me when no one seems to be angry at me and I can't recall anything I've done that was TERRIBLY wrong; but when I ponder how my thoughts, words and deeds render me unworthy of mercy, I see the height and depth and breadth of God’s love.

As Saint Paul said, “...God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”

In the Crucifixion we find the deepest sorrow we can ever know. We have killed our God, and forfeited by that all hope and every right to deliverance. We have no claim on God’s mercy; we should only suffer his justice. 

We plunge through that narrow gate of grief and remorse into a bottomless pool of sorrow.  The saints have shown us how to dig a well of remorse, that it might be filled with the knowledge of love.