But it only works for awhile. Sooner or later we re-enter reality, where we may feel as if we've forgotten what it feels like to be happy. But is total happiness ever really possible? Even if we're rich, satisfied, supplied with every good thing and experience, we may still feel empty, yearning for something we can't even name.
There's never a time in our lives when every single thing has fallen into place and we experience perfect happiness. But we can, at every moment, experience peace. Part of finding peace is understanding the goodness and value of our tears. After all, many saints spoke of "the gift of tears." And the Eastern (in this case Syrian) Fathers of the Church even proposed that tears be considered a sacrament.
Even though crying stuffs up our heads and noses, and inflames our sinuses and give us sore throats, tears still can have a very healthy effect on our hearts, spirits, and bodies. In his Beatitudes, Jesus says, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." Part of what Jesus is telling us is that avoiding mourning, avoiding tears, can be a way of not really experiencing the depths of our sorrow - and that is an unhealthy way of running away from our humanity. Fr. Richard Rohr says, "Tears are therapeutic and healing, both emotionally and physically. Crying helps the body shed stress hormones and stimulates endorphins. Weeping is a natural and essential part of being human."
When we weep, allowing ourselves to experience our feelings, we can discover that what we thought was anger devastating us is really grief. When we allow ourselves to cry, we discover that, like the rest of humanity, we are vulnerable - and that is both humbling and liberating.
Part of finding healing peace for our spirits is realizing that when we cry, God cries with us and comforts us through those who reach out to us with their hugs, comforting words, and loving actions. The friend who brings a casserole. The friend who drops us off or picks us up at the hospital. The friend who listens to us cry. The friend who sits with us at the funeral parlor. Even kind strangers can convey to us the endless mercy of God - the nurse who patiently answers our questions, or the Hospice chaplain who is a rock of strength when we fall apart. We only have to be awake and alive and alert to find God's comforting mercy in our lives.
St. Ephrem even suggested that we don't know God until we cry. God is always in tears as we, our world, and the entire universe struggles and suffers, slowly moving forward towards wholeness.
Ask yourself - Whom do you cry for? Are your tears always only for yourself? Or, do you also cry with God? Can a news story about a stranger, maybe even someone on another continent, bring you to tears? When you look upon the ravages of war, can you weep not only for our soldiers but for everyone caught up in ruinous conflict? God kneels in the dust, weeping for and comforting every fallen soldier, for all are God's children. Can you weep for the unborn child whose body is being torn to pieces by a Doctor's instruments? Can you weep for the farmer and the small business owner? Can you mourn for the miners and the fired workers looking for jobs and re-training? Can you weep for the Hispanic illegal alien who is not a criminal, who has worked and paid taxes, and is suddenly arrested at work and deported, leaving his wife and family to fend for themselves? Can you sob for the African mother whose child lies in her arms dying of malnutrition? Can you weep at the knowledge of polluted water and air and the earth devastated by strip mining and deforestation? Can your weeping heart hold both the police officer who has killed a man, and the man he has killed?
Can we in America weep for the political divisiveness in our country and recognize that God is neither Republican nor Democrat but embraces all His people in their suffering? Can we lay aside our anger and weep instead, for the souls of our politicians, for the souls of our people, instead of finger-pointing at one group or another and blaming them? Can we weep and beg God to show us the Truth in every situation?
Fr. Richard Rohr says,
"Perhaps weeping will allow us to know God much better than ideas (can). In this Beatitude, Jesus praises those who can enter into solidarity with the pain of the world and not try to remove or isolate themselves from its suffering. This is why Jesus says the rich person often can’t see the Kingdom, because they spend too much time trying to make tears unnecessary and even impossible.
"Jesus describes those who grieve as feeling the pain of the world. Weeping over our sin and the sin of the world is an entirely different response than self-hatred or hatred of others. Grief allows one to carry the dark side, to bear the pain of the world without looking for perpetrators or victims, but instead recognizing the tragic reality that both sides are caught up in.
"Tears from God are always for everyone, for our universal exile from home. 'It is Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted' (Jeremiah 31:15). I am grateful that the new emergence of hospice work, bereavement ministries, and formal 'grief work' seems to indicate we are beginning to understand this. In Men’s Rites of Passage, the 'day of grief' is often the turning point toward a man’s initiation. Men finally discover that so much of what they thought was anger was actually sadness, loss, and grief."
In our culture which prides itself on entertainments and diversions, we have epidemics of drug overdoses, and companies which have no guilt over addicting people to nicotine in cigarettes, cigars, and Vapes. We have numerous gambling casinos in every state. We all need entertainment, but it needs to be healthy entertainment. And we can't allow our entertainments to enable us to hide from the necessary grief work which would hurtle us into the dark on a roller coaster of pain, but then, if we hang on for the ride, hurtle us back upward into the light of graced acceptance and inner peace. Compulsive entertainment enables us to hide from the necessary grief work of facing and entering into the suffering which goes on in every nation and class of society, suffering which could be lessened by just and compassionate changes in our laws. We all have so many types of opiates to drug us and thus keep us from facing reality - our own and our world's suffering.
But God is Reality and God is Truth and God is Merciful Love. The gift of tears releases us from isolating ourselves from our pain and the rest of the world's pain. Tears are the Sacrament of the Presence of God in our lives and everyone else's life. May our tears bring us closer to ourselves, to the world, and to God. If our hearts - and tears - are centered on and in God, we will find peace - because God Alone IS Peace. Then everything in our lives, no matter how fragmented our lives seem, will eventually fall into place, carefully held by Him.