3rd Sunday of Advent 16.12.12 Valley of tears
St Paul tells us in the epistle to ‘rejoice always’. Yet he also tells us in other places that this earthly life is an ‘exile’ from our true home, implying that we cannot expect to be completely happy in this life.
And we have one of our most common prayers, the Hail Holy Queen, referring to this earth as a ‘valley of tears’.
Certainly we have much reason for tears, either in our own lives or in the world at large.
So which is it to be, rejoicing or tears, or both? How can we rejoice always when so much is not as it should be?
If we are to talk of valleys of tears we could say there are two kinds of tears. There are tears without hope, and tears with hope.
The tears without hope are for those who see no way out of their present troubles. There is no God, no salvation, no heaven as far as these people can see. They suffer without relief. All they can do is seek some sort of happiness wherever they can find it, but they do not expect much.
The tears with hope are the tears we shed as people of faith, understanding that any sufferings we endure are only temporary; only stages along the way to a glorious eternity, where ‘every tear will be wiped away’. There are no tears in heaven.
But there is much reason for tears along the way. We are allowed to acknowledge that things are wrong. Being joyful does not mean we have to pretend that nothing bothers us.
We can and should be upset at certain things, eg abortion, blasphemy, injustice - but we do not allow any evil to rob us of our faith, or hope of better things to come.
Our Lord Himself shed tears over Jerusalem when He contemplated the destruction it would bring on itself. It was so unnecessary; they could have avoided that fate.
But as He shed those tears He knew that He would make things better by His actions. He could see the glorious tomorrow as well as the sad today.
Tears of sorrow are not necessarily tears of despair.
Our Lady shed tears at Calvary, but not because she was despairing. She knew her Son would rise again, but she still felt His pain, and the rejection He would experience.
We acknowledge what is wrong; we feel the pain that must come with that. But we also pray in certain hope that what is now wrong will be set right. The blind shall see, the deaf shall hear; even the dead shall rise; and most of all, the evil can be converted to good.
We have to rejoice at so much promise, so much possibility of salvation.
The more we embrace the joyful hope the more capacity we have to take a share in the suffering.
No one minds a little bit of pain if we can be sure that we will feel better soon afterwards.
In this earthly exile the pain is more than a ‘little’ and the better times are not necessarily ‘soon’, but the principle is the same.
We are thrown into the midst of a disordered world so that we can help to bring order. We are ambassadors for Christ, bringing His healing into effect, particularly on this very point of offering hope.
There are many who have the suffering but cannot see the joy. They are in a ‘valley’ with no sky. For them we must proclaim and demonstrate that there is Hope.
Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy, the Psalm says (Ps 126). And so it shall be for us.
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