I often find myself in a state of mourning, emotionally affected by the violence, corruption, poverty and racism, not to mention many other ills, that surround all of us. Because I have opted to live close to excluded people, these realities are undisguised and easy to see from my perspective. But, since I’m not marginalized or impoverished myself, I am very rarely a victim of violence or injustice – on the contrary, I live in a country where Catholic clergy are privileged and treated with great respect. So, sometimes I feel scruples over how much I let certain situations affect me. When a neighbor who I didn’t know very well is murdered by the police, for example, I’m not always sure to what extent my emotional reaction is a compassionate and “blessed” refusal to be indifferent, or a way of unconsciously appropriating the suffering of another to feed my ego, a way of feeling like I am living a “hard core” experience which in fact I’m very protected from.

When, and to what extent, is my mourning blessed? How can I tell if it comes from the good spirit or the evil one? I have found a helpful criterion for discernment in Pope Benedict XVI’s book, Jesus of Nazareth, in his discussion of the Sermon on the Mount:

Is it good to mourn and to declare mourning blessed? There are two kinds of mourning. The first is the kind that has lost hope, that has become mistrustful of love and of truth, and that therefore eats away and destroys man from within. But there is also the mourning occasioned by the shattering encounter with truth, which leads man to undergo conversion and to resist evil. This mourning heals, because it teaches man to hope and to love again. (….) At the foot of Jesus’ Cross we understand better than anywhere else what it means to say “blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Those who do not harden their hearts to the pain and need of others, who do not give evil entry to their souls, but suffer under its power and so acknowledge the truth of God – they are the ones who open the windows of the world to let the light in.

This key helps me to sift through my emotions in my Examens and prayer, asking for the grace to feel with those around me in a way that de-centers and opens me to communion, and points to the day in which we will all be comforted.

Photo: “LeRiche Mourn” by “christophe dune” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

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