Christ The Servant
Catholic Church
Cold Springs, Ontario
Homily Selections
Grief
And so we grieve. We grieve our losses. We grieve alone and with each other and for each other.
If Christ the Servant had another name, it may well be “The open heart” Our community understands and shares so well all of the joys and sorrows of the heart and the soul We constantly wish each other peace and love. Often unspoken but always present is the highest level of trust we hold in each other. This is a safe place to to just “be” to feel our feelings, and to express them (or not) in whatever way is appropriate for us to do this.
There is no “right” or “proper way to grieve. There is no set time for grieving. The only thing we can do wrong is not to grieve .. Grieving is something you have to go through to get through. I am really sure of this.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross is the psychiatrist who understood and shared her thoughts and knowledge of death and dying. She really got it. She spoke of the stages of grief...and she listed them. They are denial, anger, bargaining, depression...and acceptance. When I first learned of these stages of grief I somehow expected them to progress in order, to be emotionally tidy so that the grieving process could be handled in sequence., measured and eventually depleted. But it doesn’t work like that as any grieving person can tell you.. The grieving process zig zags between the stages as it needs to do...and sometimes it just leaves us silent and immobile for long periods of time. Often we feel at its mercy pulled in whatever direction it takes us without understanding how and why this is happening. I recall my aunt telling me by letter that “sometimes the grief is so heavy, you can’t even raise your arms. As I read this (I was grieving the loss of my husband at the time) I realized that I had been sitting unmoving in the chair for two hours.
At other times the process behaves like a “grief quake”, turning a calm moment into a flood of tears. It is important to cry those tears when they come. Grieving is something you have to go through to get through.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross saw and celebrated the spiritual dimension of death.....the Homecoming............and she bought herself a lot of trouble for doing it.
I recall a dinner party I attended more than 30 years ago . At the dinner party there were at least five psychiatrists, and just as many people who thought psychiatrists knew everything about everything. And then there was me.
The topic of conversation was a genuine sadness that Dr. Kuebler Ross had abandoned her brilliant analytic mind and and fallen prey to the “magical” thinking of belief in a God and afterlife. As I looked around the table and watched the agreeing nods as doctor after doctor weighed in against her beliefs I couldn’t help but notice that no one maintained eye contact with anybody else. I still speculate about why that might have been. I did not state my disagreement , nor did I challenge the behavior being expressed by the lack of eye contact. I am not in the habit of telling psychiatrists they are nuts....particularly in groups!!!
Some people, myself among them, use humour to help them deal with some of the rougher edges of life. There is nothing particularly right or wrong in doing that. If it works, it works, if it doesn’t it doesn’t I recall a conversation with my brother during my mother’s funeral in which he was musing endlessly between cremation and burial for himself..
After listening to him for some time, I allowed that I was going to have myself stuffed. That I would create about 500 cd’s before I died on subjects that I considered important and then spend three months a year with each of my four children so that I might continue to have some input into their lives and more important the lives of my grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Our families and people who love us often try to eliminate our grief and feel they have failed us when they can't. Grief is something you have to go through to get through.
I invited Kathleen to contribute her thoughts to this homily. Kathleen prefers not to speak publicly, so we don't have that in common. One of the things we do have in common is that we were both expelled from religion class in grade 12. Mother Euphemia said I was a heretic proven by the questions I asked. I don't know why Kathleen was expelled but my guess is that the reason is probably along the same lines!!!!. She agreed and decided to speak on the connection that faith has with grief and loss.
Kathleen stated that when a great loss is suffered by a person of faith, oftentimes others will try and other comfort with phrases like "your faith will keep you strong" and God will give you consolation, "Your loved one is in a better place"and "They are in God's hands>'
However, as Kathleen pointed out it often happens that deep anguish can lead to a period of extreme doubt and one can find that one is in the middle of a crisis of faith, or at least that one's faith, like one's body and spirit is totally numb to any form of consolation. It would seem ,then in our saddest times, when we really need God, that God sometimes seems silent and does not hear our anguished cries of pain.
Perhaps the person who has written the most heartfelt description of grief and of this time of "faith crisis" is C.
S. Lewis , the scholar, prolific writer, and great Christian thinker. Kathleen shared that when his wife died it seemed to his many friends quite logical that, since he was a well known Christian author, he would be able to find consolation in his faith.
The fact is that he was totally unable to do so. He wrote "Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll gladly listen. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't talk to me about the consolations of religion or I should suspect that you do not understand."
To save himself from what he described as a "mental breakdown" he began to write a form of diary describing his feelings and thoughts. It was later published under the title" A grief observed" under the pseudonum N. W Clark. When it was published it quickly became very popular and many people, because they didn't know who the real author was, actually sent it to C,S. Lewis to help him journey through his grief over the death of his wife.
Initially Lewis described his feelings as fear----fear of going places that he and his wife had enjoyed "our favourite pub. our favourite wood." He was afraid of what the future would bring when the intense and painful agony of grief died away,"What will follow then? just intense apathy, this dead flatness? It is important to realize, understand and accept that sometimes when we are grieving or when we are trying to avoid grieving,, our thoughts and behaviors can take some very dramatic, sometimes inauthentic turns. This is all part of the process ....and we have to go through it to get through it.
C. S. Lewis expressed his darkness, his sense of distance from God, which John of the Cross called "the dark night of the soul". The most awful thoughts of God came into his mind and later Lewis realized that he was truly angry with God for the suffering he was going through. He felt deeply hurt by the God he had trusted.
Then one morning unexpectedly his heart felt "lighter than it had been for many weeks" and slowly he began to feel that the door to God was no longer shut and bolted. Perhaps God showed Lewis that his gift of writing could bring him peace.
"I have gradually been coming to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted, he said. " Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face?? The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can't give it:you are like a drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.
Lewis then realized that he had, in his grief, been focusing on himself and his loss, followed by his wife, Joy, and then on God. He felt that in some ways his faith was like"a house of cards" that needed to be knocked down and rebuilt to become stronger. For Lewis the stages of grief did not progress swiftly from fear anger anguish and pain to warmth and light. He described the slow transition as "like the warming of a room or the coming of daylight." When you first notice them they have been going on for some time.
C.S Lewis found his faith anew as he moved through his grief and renewed his interrupted relationship with God. His process of traveling this road is so utterly honest and soul-searching that it has helped many people, including Kathleen to accept that we can have serious doubts, be angry, have many many dark nights of the soul and still grow in our community journey of faith.
Germain spoke powerfully and eloquently about the miracle of the resurrection at Bill's funeral. He acknowledged our grief and how much we will miss this wonderful man but reminded us that where Bill is, we will one day follow. On that day we will see clearly the resurrected life and we will embrace all those we love, like Bill and Kate. Our hearts will be lifted to such heights and like parents of a new born baby, our tears will be of sheer joy and celebration. Thus begins the new chapter of life after death.
But first we grieve. Grief is like purifying water for the spirit and the soul. Eventually it will wash away the extreme pain of our loss and we will walk, contented, amongst the living again. Kathleen found a wonderful writing by John O'Donohue that speaks so well to our recovery after grief.
"Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From the gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time."
Grief is something we have to go through to get through.
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