…in November
Our featured Saints this issue follow the theme of “Saints Who Lost Loved Ones”, that is, Saints who can accompany us when we lose loved ones or teach us something about that experience. It is hard to avoid facing death up close and personally in this world, if we live enough and love enough. While our Faith provides the ultimate consolation—a promise of reunion beyond the veil, and a remaking of creation at the end of time—the physical absence of the beloved for the rest of our time in this valley of tears remains acutely painful, at least in this writer’s experience. But in the community of Faith, the Communion of Saints, and the continual presence of our Lord and his Blessed Mother, we have an accompaniment in our agonies that breaks through the isolation of grief.
“Look up!” these companions seem to say to us. As Pierre-Marie Dumont says of the soon-to-be-martyred Saint Cecilia in this issue’s cover art commentary on page 7, “Cecilia’s glance…reaches the highest heavens, the next world where ineffable music eternally celebrates the supreme beauty of him who is beyond all things. And here Cecilia has received the divine grace of joining the song of her heart with the choir of angels and saints in glory.”
Yes, in an encounter with bodily death there is horror before you, undeniable horror. Here is something which was not God’s doing, he takes no pleasure in the extinction of the living. To be—for this he created all…. Yet God did make man imperishable, he made him in the image of his own nature; it was the devil’s envy that brought death into the world, as those who are his partners will discover (Ws 1:13-14a; 2:23-24). But God redeems all, all of the worst things humanity can experience, even if we can’t see how through our burning tears. He comes in the Incarnation to walk through all this brokenness and suffering, drawing creation back to himself. This is what the feastday with which we finish the Liturgical Year is about: the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe (this year falling Sunday 24th, setting up for the first Sunday of Advent on 1st December). Our year and our trials are being drawn towards the end of time and the Lord of All. Then, at last, the souls of the virtuous are in the hands of God, no torment shall ever touch them.… They who trust in him will understand the truth, those who are faithful will live with him in love; for grace and mercy await those he has chosen (Ws 3:1,9).
What does this all mean for our own lives? Scripture, and the lives of the Saints, make it clear: the virtuous man, though he dies before his time, will find rest. Length of days is not what makes age honourable, nor number of years the true measure of life (4:7-8). As the famous Tolkien quote runs, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” The Responsorial Psalm for the Feast of All Saints (1st November) paints a beautiful picture of the holiness we strive for: Who shall climb the mountain of the Lord? / Who shall stand in his holy place? / The man with clean hands and pure heart, / who desires not worthless things (Ps 23).
Other Crosses to Bear
Death of loved ones isn’t the only cross we bear in this life, of course, and this month we unite ourselves in prayer to those bearing the consequences of human sin in two particular ways: victims of war, and prisoners—as well as their families, their victims, and those involved in the prison service. In war, the full horrors of suffering inflicted from one human being to another are laid bare, taking the lives of those who fight and those who get in the way, and burdening those who survive in body with a battle to process trauma that often lasts a lifetime. Crime that results in imprisonment impacts countless people directly and indirectly, and so the path to reconciliation can be rocky. But we worship a God who sets prisoners free (Ps 145:7) because we were all imprisoned in [our] wickedness (Rm 1:18) with our freedom restricted by sin, and he came to break our bonds.
Job’s Perspective
For anyone struggling with any of these crosses, or others, we can do worse than spending some time with Job. The Book of Job faces up to the depths of human suffering in a complex, rich, and uncompromising way that resonates deeply at times of particular pain. Who among us has not cried, “Man, born of woman, has a short life yet has his fill of sorrow. He blossoms, and he withers, like a flower; fleeting as a shadow, transient” (Jb 14:1-2). Or railed, “Why do the wicked still live on, their power increasing with their age? They see their posterity ensured, and their offspring grow before their eyes. The peace of their houses has nothing to fear, the rod that God wields is not for them” (21:7-9). We may feel these things acutely even when we simultaneously stand firm in our faith, and in our faith and reason declare, “If we take happiness from God’s hand, must we not take sorrow too?” (2:10).
Job, predating Christ, in a way sets the scene for the fullness of Salvation: “God, you say, reserves the man’s punishment for his children. No! Let him bear the penalty himself, and suffer under it! Let him see his ruin with his own eyes, and himself drink the anger of Shaddai. When he has gone, how can the fortunes of his House affect him, when the number of his months is cut off? But who can give lessons in wisdom to God, to him who is judge of those on high?” (Jb 21:19-22) For, as Paul puts it: Since all the children share the same blood and flesh, [Christ] too shared equally in it, so that by his death he could take away all the power of the devil, who had power over death, and set free all those who had been held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death (He 2:14-15).
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