“We can't have full knowledge all at once. We must start by believing; then afterwards we may be led on to master the evidence for ourselves.” (Saint Thomas Aquinas).
Many years ago when my youngest child died before he was even born, I suffered the greatest most heart-wrenching anguish that I have ever experienced in my entire life.
It was an anguish that was literally BEYOND words. I could not speak about it and had no cognitive or emotional ability to explain the terrible distress that I felt so deeply in my soul. Afterwards, I became very physically ill. Unbeknown to me at the time, a pre-existing medical condition that I was unaware that I already had became progressively worse to the point that after some years, it became debilitating.
I know now – and I suspected at the time – that the ferocity, extent and severity of this illness was directly attributable to the terrible grief that I experienced as a result of the loss of that child.
In fact, when I was undergoing some very serious medical tests some months after that child died – because the symptoms of my undiagnosed illness were becoming so severe that I was unable to live a normal life – the surgeon told me that the loss of my child was proving catastrophic to my health. He was correct. My terrible anguish affected my emotional, spiritual and physical health.
One of the greatest sorrows that I bore – after losing that child – was the knowledge that he had died about a month before I realised that I had lost him, and I had been carrying my dead child inside my womb for an entire month without realising that he had gone to Heaven. This was a terrible thing for me to endure at the time. You see, I have always imagined that if – God forbid – a loved one were to die before me, I would be able to sit beside that soul and pray for them and sing hymns for them and praise God for them. In other words, I had always assumed that I would be able to sing my loved ones into the arms of my Beloved…
And for years I tormented myself by wondering what I had been doing in the moment when my child’s soul left his body. I tormented myself by deriding myself as a bad mother because I had not protected my child and – if not saved him – at least comforted him during his moment of passing from this world to the next one.
For years I tried to image what I had been doing in that moment. Was I shouting at my other children? Was I watching television? Was I cooking and cleaning? Was I working? Was I gossiping on the phone? Was I asleep? Was I completely oblivious to the anguish of that child’s soul as he left this world and entered into the next one?
And for years, I (needlessly) endured terrible terrible anguish worrying about the last moments of my child’s earthly life…
Since my conversion – which occurred through Grace and no merit of my own while I was praying for my little niece who was so sick some years ago – I have come to understand the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas who said, “We can't have full knowledge all at once. We must start by believing; then afterwards we may be led on to master the evidence for ourselves.”
For that knowledge has come to me in stages and not all at once… You see – after all those years and all that suffering – I have come to realise that the anguish I felt at not being able to sing my child into the arms of my Beloved was entirely misplaced. You see, my angush was caused because I did not try to understand God’s plan – instead I tried to deride Him for failing to fulfil my own plans. You see, my precious little boy’s soul was not created so that I could help him to reach Paradise – God already arranged that by carrying him home before he was even born, baptised as he was by desire. No.
HIS soul was created so that he could help MINE.
And today – right here and now – can you believe that I experience such unearthly joy. For I know that when the time comes for me to shuffle off this mortal coil and leave this earthly life, my Beloved has given me my own little saint – perfectly formed and fearfully made… And it shall be HE who sings ME (and all of those who I hold dear) into the arms of my Beloved…
For that is why he was made…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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