During this Jubilee Year of Mercy we have been month-by-month working our way through the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy. This September we are looking at one of the most tangible and perhaps the one that we most frequently confront, share and are blessed with: Comfort the Sorrowful. It is the work of mercy that we meet everyday in our relationships with our brothers and sisters in life.

Comforting the Sorrowful comes very natural in many ways. We can often watch a father or mother with a child who is in the midst of a small sorrow that seemingly consumes all happiness around them quickly come to the child’s comfort. We see spouses, the husband or wife, reach out quite naturally to the hurt the other is experiencing in the moment. The problem comes when we begin to think about it, worry about it and then withhold ourselves from the moments of comforting or receiving comfort from another.

The examples in my life, as a priest, are numerous as I am sure they are within yours. Death is always the hardest whether it is offering comfort to a couple whose child has died or a husband or wife whose spouse has died. It may be a divorce, the abuse of drugs, alcohol or infidelity or pornography in a relationship. And the list could go on. The hardest part in my life is the tendency to seek to fix the problem—to look at the sorrow of the person as a problem rather than the reality of what they are feeling and experiencing at that particular moment.

Comforting the Sorrowful invites us to simply be present to the other in a moment of grace. It is helping the person in sorrow search for and discover the presence of Jesus Christ by our presence in love, mercy and prayer. We hear this again and again in our Sacred Scripture and in the tradition of our Church. When we begin to allow the presence of God to rest in the sorrowing heart then we begin to search for Jesus, ““Everyone is looking for You.”  He said to them, “Let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby, so that I may preach there also; for that is what I came for.”  And He went into their synagogues throughout all Galilee, preaching and casting out the demons.” (Mk 1:37-39) He offers us rest, coming to meet us on the Day of Resurrection, giving us life by giving his very self. God does this. He is our rest. (p 153)

This is what God does when we don’t try to fix sorrow but rather allow God to heal sorrow. God comes to us as we are, where we are and when we are—no matter who we are.

Comforting the Sorrowful is choosing to act as God acts. It is being with the other in the moment choosing to be the simple blessing of grace by embracing and holding with the other their sorrow for the eternal moment of love. We recognize this as the blessing of life. “So we are weak and weary, but we hope in God, who comes to meet us in the person of Christ. For the weak he becomes weak, to win over the weak—just as St. Paul followed in his steps and modeled for us (cf. 1 Cor 9:22-23).” (p 152)

God Bless

Fr. Mark

 

 

quotes are from, Grace in the Wilderness by Br. Francis de Sales Wagner, OSB