The Need to Mourn

Mourning is an ancient ritual, one in which Jesus participated

One of the most tremendously rewarding and challenging aspects of the priesthood is comforting people in their darkest moments of sorrow. Do not be mistaken, and think that priests, monks and chaplains are exempt from the pain of those whom they try to comfort, or that we have magical words that somehow ease the pain or bring order to the chaos of grief. Platitudes are useless in the dark days of mourning. Our dead may very well be “in a better place,” but it is oddly of little comfort to say those words. In a powerful witness of human behavior, Christ “does not say, ‘Well, now he is in heaven, everything is well; he is separated from this difficult and tormented life.’ Christ does not say all those things we do in our pathetic and uncomforting attempts to console. In fact he says nothing—he weeps.”

In like fashion, we need to embrace the grief that we feel at the loss of loved ones in our lives. We need to honor the bereavement process, because just as God gave us special people to share our lives, so too God has blessed us with the grief that we feel when we lose a loved one. Grief is confirmation that our loved one was a person of value, a beloved son or daughter, a cherished brother or sister, a treasured friend. Grief is how we honor a well-lived life. There death is grief-worthy. In grieving, we do their memory justice, and follow in the example of Jesus, who wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus. Like martyrs of the ancient church, like Lazarus in the New Testament, that a loved one departed from this world before their time was up makes their death particularly galling for those of us left behind to wonder how we are going to fill the space that they once occupied. The mystery of a future without them is a daunting, right now, as the mystery of death itself.

As a priest and monk of the Orthodox Church, I am comfortable with this mystery, as all Christians should be. Death can be a mystery precisely because the triumph over death is not a mystery. As the Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann wrote, “in essence, Christianity is not concerned with coming to terms with death, but rather with the victory over it.” In the light of everlasting life, in the name of Jesus Christ, the dreadful threat and dark mystery that is death is transformed into a happy and victorious event for the believer, and “Death is swallowed up in victory.” (1 Cor. 15:54)

So mourning is an ancient ritual, one in which Jesus participated, and those of his faith before him. For all of us, all people, death is a common element of humanity, the common trait that we share, and the common enemy of our loved ones. And like grief, victory over death binds people together in a larger, more powerful community, the community that is found in the Christian faith. People accuse Christians of being members of a “death cult,” obsessed with a dying savior and focused on the afterlife to the exclusion of the present; but they are wrong. Christianity does not deny life, Christianity affirms life. Christianity affirms life even in death, because for Christians, death does not remove the relationship that exists. In death, as in life, they are our son or daughter, our brother or sister, or is our friend. In death, as in life, we love and honor them, and death cannot take them from us. Death may have taken our loved one, but it has also provided us with the opportunity to live with the hope of one day joining them. And a life with hope is a good life.

So for us as Christians, death is the beginning of the true life that also awaits us beyond the grave, if indeed we have begun to live it here. Christ, “the resurrection and the life,” (John 11:25) transformed death. Christ assumed human flesh, Christ was crucified, resurrected, ascended to heaven and waits for us there, and Christ ushers us into new life both now and after our death. Therefore, even as death exposes our frailty and our grief, death does not reveal our finiteness; instead it reveals our infiniteness, our eternity. To this end, the Christian does not ponder the mystery of death in a way that is paralyzing, negative and apathetic, but in a way that is productive, positive and dynamic.

God, to whom you have entrusted your soul, is a good and perfect God. This God will do what is right with your loved one, what is just with them, and what is honorable with them. There is no saying, no claim, no scripture that will give us peace in our loss right now or even calm our troubled souls; but we can find comfort and peace in God who is present with us, and in us and through us today as we gather in the intimacy of grief, to mourn the death of our loved one.

With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon

Photo: The grave of my late spiritual father, Blessed Dimitry of Santa Rosa.

Saturday February 22, 2020 / February 9, 2020
The Saturday of the Dead. Tone two.
Martyr Nicephorus of Antioch (ca. 257).
Uncovering of the relics (1805) of St. Innocent of Irkutsk (1731).
Uncovering of the relics of St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus (1992).
New Hieromartyr Basil priest (1930).
New Hieromartyr John priest (1938).
Venerable Pancratius, hieromonk of the Kiev Caves (13th c.).
Venerables Gennadius (1516) and Nicephorus (1557), monks, of Vazhe Lake (Vologda).
Hieromartyrs Marcellus, bishop of Sicily; Philagrius, bishop of Cyprus; and Pancratius, bishop of Taormina; disciples of Apostle Peter (1st c.).
Venerables Aemilianus and Bracchio of Tours (6th c.) (Gaul).
St. Teilo, bishop (Llandaff in Wales) (6th c.) (Celtic & British).
Martyr Apollonias of Alexandria (249).
St. Romanus the Wonderworker of Cilicia (5th c.).
Hieromartyr Peter Damascene, bishop of Damascus (743).

The Scripture Readings

1 Thessalonians 4:13-17

The Comfort of Christ’s Coming

13 But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.

15 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

John 5:24-30

Life and Judgment Are Through the Son

24 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. 25 Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, 27 and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. 28 Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice 29 and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. 30 I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.