Matthew van Maastricht

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear,” writes C.S. Lewis. The Cambridge Professor and writer lost his wife to cancer after only four years of marriage. His reflections written during that time were later published in a book titled, A Grief Observed. Lewis continues, “I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness…”

Grief is an experience that is hard to name, and even harder to describe. This is the nature of the human condition. This uncomfortable and confusing mixture of emotions is not something to run from, but to allow it space to dwell.

Grief involves both mourning our loss, but also remembering all that was good. And so today, we grieve his absence from us. We mourn his loss and we celebrate all of the light that he brought into the world.

And grief is so hard, it is so confusing, it is so messy, because we know in our heart of hearts, we know in our spirits, in the deepest parts of our being, we know with a deep knowledge that this is not how it is supposed to be. We know that this isn’t right. And it is okay to name that. It’s good to name that.

This is why we gather together. We do so not to avoid looking at death, but to stare it down. We look into the grave not because the grave has the final word, but so that we can stand over it, defiantly shaking our fists, and proclaiming with St. Paul, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

We look death straight in the eyes, because it is only by doing so that we, eventually, we might see through death. That we might see that the grave is not simply a pit of darkness, but that we might, eventually, see the light breaking forth in the darkness of the depths, that one can see the light of a new day. That even in the deep depths of death, the light of Christ can break through, even there.

***

And it is only when we look at the source of our grief, when we look at death, when we look at the grave, when we stare down the darkness as we wait for the light to shine forth can we say with Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” It shall be well not because we ignore the pain, not because we turn away from it, not because we ignore it, but it shall be well because we trust that even in the midst of this, that God joins us where we are. That God experiences what we experience, that God feels what we feel, that God suffers alongside of us, and that, eventually, God will help us past this grief, past this suffering, past this pain. That God will lead us from darkness into the light.

All manner of thing shall be well because we do not grieve alone and we do not pick ourselves up alone. All manner of thing shall be well because death does not have the final word and the grave is not the most powerful force. All manner of thing shall be well because we have hope that life follows death just as the dawn follows the darkness of night.

We have hope because we trust that God is doing something beyond our vision. We have hope that God can bring good out of bad. We have hope that, as we read in the Psalms, “those who go out weeping…shall come home with shouts of joy.”

“Blessed are those who mourn,” said Jesus, “for they will be comforted.”

The night brings darkness. But when you look into the darkness, you will, eventually, see the morning light breaking through as a sign that a new day has dawned.