Homily for March 29, 2009

Father Tom’s Homily
5th Sunday of Lent
March 29, 2009

“And Jesus wept.” This is one of the shortest sentences in the bible, yet it teaches us more about God than volumes of theology ever could.
Those two words, “Jesus wept” tell us what we had never suspected about the God whom we call the almighty and eternal Creator of the universe. We’d never known about the tears of God.
“Jesus wept.”

What are we to do with a God who cries? What are the meaning of his tears?
The first time I had ever heard about the tears of God was in the response of a dad at the death of his son.
About thirty years ago, Rev William Sloan Coffin, a prominent Protestant preacher and activist, preached the homily at the funeral of his teenage son who had been killed in a car accident. He said it was a tragedy that sadden everyone. He said that God wept at the young boy’s death.

In today’s gospel Jesus wept with Mary and Martha over the death of their beloved brother Lazarus. That is to say, God wept with them. Jesus wept out of deep friendship, to mourn the death of his friend Lazarus and to mourn with his sisters, Martha and Mary.
Today’s story of the tears of God teaches us an important language. Tears are the language of the soul. Tears express what words cannot.

St. Ephrem, a fourth century poet and theologian, had a great devotion to the humanity of Jesus. In his writings he speaks about “the gift of tears.”
God does not weep because we weep. Rather, with the gift of tears, we weep with a God whose feelings for suffering humanity are deep and true. It is a gift to weep with God.
“Blessed are those who mourn.”

Our culture does not treasure tears. They are seen as a sign of weakness.
37 years ago, Senator Edmund Muskie was a leading democratic candidate for the presidential election in 1974. During an outdoor impromptu interview with TV reporters, Muskie wept while defending his wife from attacks by an anti-Muskie newspaper.
His tears were interpreted as a sign of weakness. He was not tough enough to be president. The public did not want a touchy-feely kind of guy. The resulting loss of confidence caused him to drop out of the race.

The flaw was/is not in a man who weeps. It is in a culture’s inability to treasure heartfelt compassion expressed with tears.
It is thought that our leaders must not get caught up in feelings about the human casualties that result from the policies of government.
The ultimate expression of official heartless is the term “collateral damage,” which dismisses as unimportant the innocent dead and wounded caused by official actions. By such things as bombs or harsh policies.
Tears are not allowed. We cannot have leaders who are moved by these things.

Yet God sheds tears of compassion at human suffering.
“Blessed are those who mourn…” Blessed are those who weep with God, the Compassionate One. Cursed are those who are unmoved by human suffering.

God wept at the death of the minister’s son, and at the death of his own Son on the cross – and at the suffering of all his beloved children. Because God is unable to ignore our suffering.
It is in the language of tears of compassion that some healing can begin in our broken hearts.

I heard this story from Monseñor Urioste, the chancellor of the archdiocese of San Salvador under four bishops, including Archbishop Romero. He told it to our group of 25 priests on a Maryknoll pilgrimage to Central America in 2001.
During the crucifixion of the Salvadoran people by the military government during the 1980s, many people came to the Monseñor with their troubles.
One day a woman came to him in tears with her burden of grief. She sat across a table from him as she told about her only child, a twenty-year old daughter named Maria, who had participated in some public demonstrations against unjust government policies,

When Maria became missing, her mother spent several frantic days in search of her. Finally she was told that Maria’s body was seen at the city dump where many victims of the death squads were thrown. The mother told of her painful discovery at the city dump that Maria had been tortured and beheaded.
Monseñor Urioste told how stunned he was as he saw the tears stream down her face, tears of a mother’s broken heart. He said he had nothing to say, and he began to weep with the mother. Seeing his tears, the mother reached across the table and held the priest’s hands…and said “padrecito” (“dear father”).
Urioste’s ecclesiastical title “monseñor” is of little account alongside the title this grieving mom gave him. It is the greatest title any priest could ever have – “padrecito.”
That was all that was said as they sat weeping together. She came to him for consolation and she ended up consoling him.

Their tears, hers and his, were an eloquent language of caring and healing. They joined their tears with the tears of God.
When we shed tears of compassion, we are sharing the tears of God, who first weeps at our tragedies. We are enable to speak this language of the heart by the grace of God, by the gift of tears.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
Broken and wounded by life’s many tragedies, one day we shall arrive at God’s house where we will be comforted in the arms of our loving Father.
When we shall see the tears on God’s cheeks, all our brokenness will be healed.
We shall weep with God, but this time they will be tears of joy.