When the Bridegroom Is Taken Away

It is a feature of every organized religion to have seasons of fasting and feasting, mourning and rejoicing; and yet there can scarcely be a religious person, however faithful, who has not from time to time felt the whole cycle a bit odd. Christians rejoice at Christmas, naturally — but what about the Christian who has just lost a job or a loved one? Does not Christmas, that season of joy, become the most wretched of seasons for some, in part precisely due to the contrast between what one actually feels, and what one is supposed to feel?

Something like this occurs to me most Lents. Spring is a lovely time of year — a time of blooming trees, planting gardens, increased light. A time when things start over — and thank goodness for that! Yet in the middle of this delightful physical season bursts the liturgical season of Lent, a time when Catholics put on sackcloth and ashes (literally, at least the ashes part), when statues are draped in dark cloth, when we fast and abstain, and when we meditate on the sorrows of Our Lord and his Passion. It can feel psychologically artificial.

There is, however, an analogue to this sort of thing in ordinary life. Even outside of the context of religion, human beings rejoice and mourn on schedule. It may be arbitrary, but it is also natural, when the earth completes another revolution around the sun, to celebrate the day one was born. I defy sociologists to find a single society with a calendar that does not celebrate this event one way or another. And likewise — though it is in the modern world sadly a more private affair — there are few people who do not annually remember the day, indeed the month when someone close to them died — a parent, a child or a spouse. It takes a close relationship to produce the kind of melancholy memories that are retained for years and spread themselves into a season.

But if human beings feel naturally these seasonal depressions and elevations of spirit — if the memory of a death can shadow an otherwise joyous time, and the celebration of a life cast a light in a dark one — then one would expect this to hold for human relationships with the divine.

Read the rest at the Register: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/grieving-with-jesus-during-lent