Lenten Retreat Day 21: Father Thomas Lynch

0:00The National Catholic Broadcasting Council presents, let us reflect together, 40 days of lent retreat from the cross to hope. Day 21, journey with the Holy Family, standing at the cross with Father Tom Lynch. Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother and the disciple whom he loved. Jesus said to his mother, woman, here is your son, then he said to the disciple, here is your mother, and from that hour, the disciple took her into his own home. It's a reflection on suffering and loss. We know this section. We know this part of the gospel. Everyone has seen the stained glass windows, the broader pictures of the crucifixion,

1:00with Mary, and Mary Magdalene, and John at the foot of the cross. I had it painted, actually, in St. Mary's Church in Lindsay. We redid the whole front of the church, and so we had Mary who was strong, and Mary Magdalene who was weaker, and we had John looking out at the people, breaking the so-called fourth wall, with his finger pointed up to the cross because he said in his gospel, I who witnesses have seen it. And we also had one more person. We had the soldier half turning his back and half looking back at Jesus on the cross. Because it's different for everyone. Suffering is very different for everyone. It's really hard to speak of suffering because it's experiential. How do you talk about something which, of its nature, is really not enough to be able to put into words, can't encompass all the way it means to be human, and to be human means to be engaged in suffering. One of the best wordsmiths of the last 20th century

2:03was the Christian apologist and Cambridge professor, C. S. Lewis. Lewis had certainly been around a great deal of suffering. He was very traumatized by his four years in the trenches in World War I. He took a long time for him to be able to get out of that post-traumatic stress syndrome, as we call it, or shell shock, as it was called in those days. But much later in life, he got married to a woman just for convenience, just so that she could stay in the United Kingdom. To everyone's surprise, they fell in love. And then his wife got cancer and died, and it just floored him again. But he wrote a brief book, one that I'd recommend. It was called The Grief Observed. And it was him with his ability to step back and look at loss and meaning. Here's the difficulty. I don't really care about people out in Tahiti, because I don't know anybody in Tahiti. All the massacres and everything else to take place. I'm sorry about them. I wish there wasn't that much evil in the world,

3:03but I'm not really engaged to be perfectly honest because I don't know them. It's only when someone who is close to me is dead, dying, leaves, betrays me, that I can feel loss, that I can suffer. And I've often thought that one of the more interesting phrases in scripture is to say, blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those who mourn. So you sit there and say, what's so blessed about mourning? When it is so difficult, when it's so shattering for almost anyone. But you don't mourn for somebody you don't love. Because otherwise, there would be no sense. You'd just be in full and complete mourning. The fact that you've been loved is a gift. The fact that you've known the grace and gift of love means that you've become a more human person. It's that certainty of being loved and knowing that you have been loved. That means that I can recognize myself. I can actually understand my identity because of that security and that confidence, because of that ineffable gift of love.

4:03So what it means is that when that love is taken away, we are called to ask ourselves some hard questions. Why? The why can often not be answered in this life. The how? Because we're called to think back about how we have been loved. And I hope where you've loved in return. But also, why we will and what we will do with this gift that we've been given. Do we just have ourselves being shattered? Or do we recognize that those parts and pieces of our life are such that we can then reach out to other people? Because it is in the healing touch and in the healing presence of other people that God will be known. You can talk all you want. You can talk. You can have the best theology. You can be articulate. Indeed, you can be glib. But until you're actually present with other people, what will they know about the power of Christ's love in the midst of suffering? There's a lot of changes that are taking place at how people do funerals. But being Irish, I think that one of the worst things that people are dropping are wakes.

5:03Wakes are not for those who have died. They're for the living. They're for people to come together and to share their loss. They're suffering and their grief. And to say, there are other people around who are here for you. This is what God does. He brings people into our life to say, you two are not just loved once and then forgotten. You're loved now and always. In the fullness of Mary being at the foot of the cross, she knew that love. She may not have been entirely clear about the resurrection because she wasn't given total foresight. But she was given that same security that Martha Bethany was given, that I know that my Redeemer will live and I shall see him again. And in my own eyes, I shall look upon him to know him, to love him, and to be loved by him. Join us tomorrow for Day 22, Journey with the Holy Family, Hope Beyond Death with Father Tom Lynch. For more information, please email us

6:03at info at ncbc.ca, visit our website at dailytvmass.com or call our office toll free at 1-888-383-6277.