A mother was here earlier today. I stood with her, there in front of the altar.
Her daughter had died; she was not quite thirty-years-old; she was serving in the national guard, serving on the border. I didn’t ask any more questions; I don’t know what happened. The details didn’t matter anyway why she was here. It was a coincidence I walked in when I did. I had forgotten something, and I just noticed her tears, and I stopped. I did the best I could; love sometimes is nothing but pain; motherhood is sometimes that—a woman crying in a church she doesn’t even know because she knows nothing else to do.
We are, of course, helping her, helping the family. They’re not parishioners, but that’s what we do. But that’s not what mattered this afternoon as we were talking. She wanted a rosary to give her daughter, to bury with her. She didn’t know where she could get one. Blessedly, we have a parishioner who makes rosaries, gives them out; he gives some to me to give them to people I think need one. She wanted one, and thank the Lord we could give her one. You could see what it meant to her, this simple thing.
But there really wasn’t much else to the encounter: tears, hugs, talk of heaven. You know how it is, grieving and comforting, we often repeat things—tears, hugs, talk of heaven. Silences. We don’t know what else to say. I fumble with my words a lot in those situations, but I try to say, as best I can, that I believe God loves our children too, that he holds them too, dries their tears too, welcomes them into happiness. I try to say that in such a way that isn’t trite or belittling of the pain. But I do think it’s important, that it matters, that it’s a good thing to say—to talk about heaven, the reality of it.
Which, I don’t know, I don’t want to make any big theological arguments today. I don’t want to interpret passages for you, defend anything. I know there are atheists out there who would say it’s all nonsense, even though they can’t explain why we still love those we’ve lost, why we still have that strange disability of love after death. Shouldn’t we know better by now, shouldn’t we evolve, shouldn’t be rational about it and move on if there really is no God? I mean, why do we cry? Why do we still love the dead? Atheists have never answered that question for me to my satisfaction. I know there are people who say that little things like a rosary, like tears, and hugs, and talk of heaven mean nothing. I know there are people who want to stand on this mother’s tears and rage about the border and politicians and politics. I know that, and I get it. But again, I don’t know, I just think those little things matter too, those things that make us think of heaven when children die. And I wanted to ask the mothers, the mothered too, to pray for that woman. Because I think it’s beautiful, in fact, that we can pray for her, we with faith enough to know the wisdom of tears, and hugs, and heaven. I think it’s something we Christians can do for one another—for those we know and those who wander in on an empty afternoon.
Today we celebrate the ascension of Jesus. Died and risen, now the incarnate Christ ascends to the right of the Father. He takes our flesh with him; we share in his risen and ascended flesh, and now our “life is hidden with Christ in God,” as Paul put it.[1] That is the theological fact behind our daring ever to talk about heaven, because our hearts have been enlightened to know “what is the hope,” it says in Ephesians, the inheritance of the saints. “And you he made alive,” Paul goes on. That is the “spirit of wisdom and revelation,” that knowledge that makes believers, no matter how foolish or awkward it seems, still talk about heaven.[2] Because Jesus is there already, and we live in him by faith, by the Spirit, and by the sacraments.
Again, I don’t know; I don’t want to say too much about it. But that’s what we Catholics should know and believe and give each other as gifts, especially those who grieve—tears and hugs and talk of heaven. Because I think that’s what in the meantime we Christians are called to do, for someone we may know or even may not know. I didn’t know this woman at all, but that didn’t matter at all. Because God had already made her my sister, the God ascended but still so close to me, to you, to her, and to her daughter too. Amen.
[1] Colossians 3:3
[2] Ephesians 1:17-18; 2:1
© 2024 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield
