My Heavenly Mother is the true Mother of all Grief…
My maternal grandmother passed away when she was one hundred years old.
It was a difficult thing to attend her funeral. This was not because I was overcome with grief fopr her loss. That – in my mind – would be a sort of sin. After all, if I cannot be grateful to my God for giving my beloved grandmother one hundred earthly years of a good life, then there is really nothing that I can be grateful for.
It was not difficult because I was mourning for others inside my heart – though my human heart still cries for the loss of people who I loved, but the cries are a little less strenuous since my conversion, which happened through Grace and no merit of my own. After all, I have FAITH now. And faith is not fractional. Faith means that I TRULY believe with all my soul that I will see my loved ones again in God’s Home in Heaven. And so, I truly have nothing to mourn, other than a few short years while I wait for that glorious moment.
It was difficult to watch the elderly children of my later maternal grandmother – my aunts and uncles (and even their older children, who are passed middle age) bury the dead.
It was a difficult thing for me to see the elderly, shaky on their feet and struggling to bend and sit and stand. It was a difficult thing to see old men and women hunched over and crying quietly from love, watching their beloved mother be buried.
And I was thinking about why this struck me as a sad thing to watch. After all it was not tragic. Far less tragic to watch the old burying the old rather than the old burying the young. Far far less tragic to watch grandparents burying their mother than grandparents burying their grandchild. But nonetheless, there was a deep sadness in seeing that. And the sadness was in the routine of these old people. They had been given the gift of their mother for a very long time. For far longer than many people are blessed with that gift. And now – in their old age – they must get used to a different reality. They must get used to living without her around.
Now, in her old age, they were more help to her than she was to them. But nevertheless, she was precious to them for their love of her and her love of them and her wisdom and gentleness in her old age.
And I have been thinking about that. For the love for their Earthly mother is just an outward expression of their greater love for their Heavenly mother. And I pray today for all those who do not know their Heavenly mother. For only one such as she could possibly sustain them during times of grief. After all, who understand the loss of a loved one more than the Queen of Heaven, who agreed to become mother to sinful souls on the day when Her Divine Son was dying. And in agreeing to that what she was really agreeing to was to accept that some of her beloved children would die eternally without ever coming back to her to be saved.
So, I pray for the Grace for me to know my Heavenly Mother (and for you too). For she is the Mother of all Grief. The true Mother of all Grief…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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