When a tragedy occurs, we instinctively turn to people who
have experienced the same difficulty we are now facing, to draw on their
wisdom, their empathy, and their living witness that this grief can be
survived. When it is the death of a loved one we are facing, Catholics have a
particularly loving consoler in Mary, who endured the piercing pain of watching
her son, Jesus, be tortured and die on the cross. She is a woman who knows the
depths of grief; thus we can cling to her and ask her to strengthen us and
console us until the brunt of our own sorrow has passed.
To be human is to know loss; to be a follower of Christ
means to shoulder our losses until they are transformed into wisdom that allows
us to be a comfort and support to others. We don’t need to be concerned about
finding the right words to speak—after all, no words of Mary are recorded after
the death of Jesus. It is our lived experience that speaks: we have felt pain
and faced struggle, we have endured, we are present to others who are now suffering.
In this way, Christ will bring us all together to eternal life.
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