Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted (Matt. 5:4)
"Blessed are they that mourn."? This goes beyond all common sense. Who can be glad of grief? But Jesus seems to say that mourning breaks down the partition-wall between man and God; He congratulates those that mourn, for the light of God's comfort can break through into the grieving soul.
Mourning is not good in itself, of course, as is love, but it will open the door of the heart for good to enter in. Jesus came in the flesh to share in our sorrow; He was not satisfied to watch from above as we groveled on earth in our sorrows. He had to come near, to hold our hand, to embrace our human flesh, to give His comfort.
Man was not made for sorrow; he was made for peace and joy, but still, sorrow enters in -- that is the human condition. So the question is, "What then?" Now that grief IS in our lives, what do we do now? Do we cope the best we can, condemned to bury the grief in our souls and go on about our daily lives? Are we to live in the state of sorrow until we die?
George MacDonald in The Hope of the Gospel says this: There are two gate-keepers to the house of prayer, and Sorrow is more on the alert to open than her grandson Joy. The gladsome child runs further afield; the wounded child turns to go home....in his sorrow, man leaves his heavenward door on the latch, and God can enter to help him...Grief is an ill-favored thing, but she is Love's own child, and her mother loves her.
We mourn because we love, and we miss what we loved and do not presently have. When I read Man's Search for Meaning at the age of 19, it changed my life. Viktor Frankl teaches his patients to be thankful that something was so wonderful that we can grieve its loss. Up to that point, I had always feared losing the "wonderfulness" of the past and of the present; I did not want to grow older because that meant leaving behind the present, which I loved so much. But reading Frankl taught me gladness of heart for the good things of my life.
But love damaged by wrong produces anger rather than gratitude. Love invaded by loss is grief. We always grieve the loss of those we love, ordinarily in death. But there are losses greater than those of death, and harder to find comfort for. We grieve the loss of friends, of children still alive, those who are beyond the reach of our tears. The Prodigal Father, whose son was in a foreign country, wasting his life and his substance, is more to be pitied than the father whose son was lost in war. The mother who realizes that she has lost the opportunity to love her children while they were still young because she was too busy to pay attention then is to be pitied as much as the one who has lost her child in death.
Would Jesus Christ, Who is the Truth, call someone blessed just because "time heals all wounds"? Would he say we are Blessed because the pain of our grief subsides with time? Would such comfort be enough for the heart of Jesus to give? Blessed is a strong word, and in the mouth of Jesus, it means all it can mean. Can He mean less than "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted with a joy worth the pain of the sorrow they experience"?
Surely He means that the grief we feel is clearing the way for a greater comfort. God's comfort must be greater than man's grief, or else there are gaps in His Godhood.
Many people have such a low expectation of the next life that they do not even expect to know their friends there; they think they will not recognize old friends and lovers in the next life. They believe that Jesus can save them from sin, but the part of us that loves will be lost forever! They believe that the chaos of this world is the final answer-- that our losses will be greater than our gains in this life. What kind of person is unable to believe that God loves every throb of every human heart towards another? That He will restore to us what was lost? Did not Jesus die to destroy death, sorrow, and enmity, so that we could be one with Him and with the Father and with one another?
Were our loves created only to become dear to us and then to be destroyed? Is it wine only that grows better with age? A heaven without our human loves is not to be desired. We are to love one another as God has loved us -- and His love does not wear out or grow thin with age. To annihilate our past loves, to confess that they are forever lost, is to crush the idea that we ourselves can love as God loves.
We will not all die, but we will all be changed. What is unlovable in us will certainly be changed to bring us closer to one another. We will all become closer to the ideal self, the germ of our true selves. If we can love one another in our imperfections, we will certainly love one another when we have been changed into the glory for which we were intended---the self which God intended to send into the world, before we were damaged by evil.
We shall be comforted when we behold our loved ones with the damage gone -- the things that did not truly belong to them gone, and what is essential to the person shining forth, wholly developed.
Our sorrow is a wind blowing through our lives, to winnow and cleanse what separates us from one another. The Lord has come to heal the broken-hearted; shall not THE Father do His best to seek and to find what was lost? Will not The Good Shepherd go after the lost sheep? Would God's restitution not give us the opportunity to ask forgiveness for the grief we have caused others and confessing our shame for the past? Will not our hearts speak to one another words that can be conveyed with a glance? Because of our love's defect, we suffer now that selfishness may be taken out of it--burned out by our pain. Our sorrow disentangles our selfishness from our loves.
What God will do for us, only He knows, but one thing is clear: The Father is Father FOR His children, or else why make Himself their Father? Our worst enemy is our own unreclaimed self -- he will always bring us to sorrow. But the Lord knows how to reclaim us and make us fit for His kingdom. And not only ourselves, but those we have loved and lost. He is getting us ready even now to experience the comfort and the joy of reunion with those we love. We must allow Him to do His work in our souls!
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