Another Lesson

I've been out of touch a couple of days, having been with a good friend for her father's wake and funeral.

Our rituals surrounding death, morbid and unnecessary though they often seem, do have the (positive?) side effect of bringing various emotions to the surface in the observer(s).

These emotions are often surprising.

I watched My friend over the past couple of days and at times I found Myself actually envious of her uncomplicated grief, the crushing sadness of losing her father untempered, unmitigated by any laundry list of confusing, conflicting feelings getting in the way.

I was envious too of her ability to let others be there for her, to accept the sincere concern we offered, to simply and completely sink down into our love and empathy the way one gives one's self up to a soothing bath. Envious of her grace in just allowing herself to be comforted.

I felt vaguely wrong in feeling envious of those things, until the lesson behind it all was made clearer.

During the funeral Mass, I found Myself crying for no apparent reason. I usually tune out during those times when circumstances mandate My presence in a church, but the relative darkness and the solemnity of the ritual are at least soothing.

The Gospel was one commonly used in funeral Masses, Luke 24:1-8. This passage recounts what happened on the Sunday after the Crucifixion, when women came to Jesus' tomb:

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women came to the tomb, bringing the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. And it happened that while they were perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling apparel; and as the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living One among the dead? He is not here, but He has risen. Remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again." And they remembered His words.

The words washed over Me but that one insistent question lodged itself in My mind: Why do you seek the living One among the dead?

And I realized that that is something that we do in our lives, again and again: Constantly put ourselves through futile exercises, nonsensical efforts with as much as chance of succeeding as looking for the living among the dead. Death, being and feeling so final, drives the simple lessons home with great force at moments like that.

I cried, and couldn't stop for some time. Normally, even at a funeral Mass, I would've made more effort to stop. This time, though, I didn't feel the need to . . . the more I cried the deeper I could feel the lesson penetrating Me, penetrating to that place where words can't reach.

My friend, in the midst of her crushing grief, understood this lesson much better than I. She sought the comfort the living could provide in the face of the awesomeness and finality of death; her sadness and her response to the efforts of those who love her was complete, rational, and totally of its time and place. It was that rare thing-in-itself that lies outside the boundaries of our reflexive system of reason.

The thought that maybe this time I had truly learned that lesson caused Me to stop crying.