This link has been bookmarked by 1 people and liked by 1 people. It was first bookmarked on 23 Feb 2008, by Elena LaVictoire.
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23 Feb 08
Elena LaVictoireAnd for the very first time in the Bible, we find a scene of mourning. Abraham enters her tent and weeps over his dead wife (Gen. 23:2).
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And for the very first time in the Bible, we find a scene of mourning. Abraham enters her tent and weeps over his dead wife (Gen. 23:2).
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When he calls Abraham, God begins to awaken sin-slumbering humanity. We are created for fellowship with him, not for the grave, and inevitably what had been accepted as a fact of life becomes a brutal, unnecessary blow. Thus the psychological paradox of faith: a belief in God’s promises heightens rather than softens the existential pain of death.
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Therefore, it is not a weak faith that feels the pain of death’s enduring power, anymore than grief over one’s sins is a sign of lack of confidence in God’s forgiveness. On the contrary, the victory of Christ on the cross intensifies our sense of death’s wrongful hold on life, and faith in the resurrection of the dead sharpens rather than blunts the loss. The scroll swallowed by John in his visions is sweet to the mouth and bitter in the stomach (Rev. 10:9–10).
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We are not wrong to grieve more deeply at the funeral of a child. The promise of life makes death less manageable emotionally, not more.
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I’ve often felt the same at funeral Masses. I’ve known the anguish of loss and the tears of impotence. I’ve raged against death in the solitude of my mind: Why? Why? Why? I’ve brokered compromises: Nobody lives forever; She’s in a better place. I’ve felt the bittersweet presence of the dead in the caverns of my memory, as well as the numbing vacuum of their absence in everyday life. Death brings many emotions that cannot be mastered, which is why it bewitches and controls so much of our lives. And yet, after the eulogies are over, the priest prepares and consecrates the bread and the wine. When the wafer hits my tongue, I feel as though the Church has put a stick in the eye of death.
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We live as we bury. It’s quite true, I think. I have little doubt that the restless humanism and volatile politics of modern Western culture stem from the ways in which Jews and Christian mourn and bury. We are not trained to reconcile ourselves to death. We do not make peace with the dark destiny of the grave. As a result, we grieve all the more intensely—and we strike back at death with all we can muster.
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