Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
—Matthew 5:4
"... Jesus is describing the state of those who
weep, who have something to mourn about. They feel the pain of the world. Jesus
is saying that those who can grieve, those who can cry, are those who will
understand.
...In this Beatitude, Jesus praises the weeping class,
those who can enter into solidarity with the pain of the world and not try to
extract themselves from it. Weeping over our sin and the sin of the world is an
entirely different mode than self-hatred or hatred of others. The “weeping
mode” allows us to carry the tragic side, to bear the pain of the world without
looking for perpetrators or victims. Instead, we recognize the sad reality in
which both sides are trapped. Tears from God are always for everybody, for our
universal exile from home. “It is Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to
be comforted” (Jeremiah 31:15). "
_____________________________
Don’t cry!
Real men don’t cry!
There’s no crying in baseball!
Tears are for the weak
Some believe
For those who are not strong
Bullies don’t cry!
Winners don’t (usually) cry
Only the oppressed
Only the losers
Yet Jesus wept
He wept in public
He wept over human loss (John 11)
He wept over the spiritual blindness of a nation (Luke
19)
It takes strength to weep
for it takes strength to touch the pain of the world
It takes more strength to take on another’s pain
Then it does to ignore it
It takes more strength to forgive
Then it does to reject, deride, or punish
It takes more strength to work with those
Who are addicted
Mentally wounded
Stuck in old patterns
Immersed in poverty
Than it does to hang around with
the rich
the comfortable
the winners
Jesus wept
And for us?
This is a time for weeping
To join servant Jesus in embracing and weeping
For the pain of the world
We need to weep
When lies are spoken (and believed)
When bullies tyrannize and gloat
When addiction wins
And wars rage
We need to weep
When illness strikes
And children die
When bombs fall and bullets fly
And weep too
When racism flourishes
And the poor are demonized and abandoned
It takes strength
To look the world in the face
To see it as it is
To allow ourselves to be bowed by the sin of the world
It takes strength to look at ourselves
and see ourselves as we really are
and embrace our own sin
our own anger, and hate, greed and bias
It takes strength to weep
And this is a time to be strong
For only in the strength of our tears
Will the world be redeemed
__________________________
He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of
suffering and acquainted with infirmity,
and as one from whom others hide their faces[b]
he was
despised, and we held him of no account.
Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our
diseases,
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by
God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our
iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his
bruises we are healed.
Isaiah 53
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