Recently, a family in my community suffered a tragic loss. I didn’t know the family personally, and I won’t go into details out of respect for their privacy. But even at my distance, knowing only a few of their relatives and friends, the grief was overwhelming. I have found myself caught up in sadness, crying at sudden moments throughout the day. At the same time, I have felt a strange sense of guilt—that these good people should suffer when I do not, that I should cry over suffering that isn’t even mine. 

Within these two sources of guilt I’ve realized lies two deeper quandaries. On the one hand, I find myself questioning God’s goodness, and His fairness when so many of life’s tragedies seem random and senseless. On the other hand, I wonder at the value of my own grief. 

I won’t propose, in this article, to answer that impossible question, “the why of undeserved pain” as L.M. Montgomery expresses it in her beloved Anne of Green Gables series. But I do believe, as Catholics, that we are allowed to wrestle with this question. Perhaps, like Jacob, we are even meant to wrestle with God, to rail against the cruelties of this life because we were meant for more. This life, this world, was supposed to be good. And it is not. We know this is because of sin, but this does not ease our grief in the slightest, especially when that grief is so wholly underserved. 

Since this tragedy, I have thought of how our faith only makes sense because of the Cross, because Christ suffered for us, the power of His sacrifice acting outside of time. It is only in the promise of the Resurrection that hope and healing are possible. In other words, our suffering, no matter how senseless, can become redemptive when united to Christ’s sacrifice. 

Nonetheless, this teaching is too often truncated to the phrase, “offer it up.”  I’ve talked about the inadequacies of this phrase in previous posts, as it implies a kind of denial of suffering. But the truly Catholic sentiment is not to ignore our suffering but rather to recognize and embrace that suffering in all its enormity. Because we know that Christ suffers with us. Because we know this “valley of tears” is not all there is.  

I know, therefore, that my guilt about my own sadness is misplaced. Rather, as a member of the Body of Christ, I am called to grieve with my community. For even if I do not know a person intimately, I know them in Christ. More importantly, when we are faced with a loss so unfathomable, it is only in our collective grief that we can come close to embracing it as it should be embraced. Together, we feel as one, becoming one Body in Christ, who alone can hold us in our hours of despair. As Christ Himself tells us, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).

I want to end with this reflection/poem I wrote in the immediate aftermath of this tragedy in my community.  As a writer, I am well aware of the inadequacy of words to capture truth. But, so often, words are all I have. So I pray that the Word made Flesh might take my small and paltry words and make them His messengers of truth and hope. 

How strange that a heart can break
For hearts it does not know,
How their tragedy can become yours
Simply because you know
The hearts that love them and grieve with them.
How bewildering that the movement of grief
From one heart to the next
Can unite all these hearts
So we might grieve as one,
As if in uniting we might feel more fully
The depth of the loss,
Knowing it cannot be felt,
It cannot be mourned
To the extent that it needs.
But we try.
Not to make sense,
For there is no sense,
No why we can answer here.
Here there is only a promise that this feeling that many can become one
Is true and more than true:
That broken can become whole.