Grieving in Hope

A Reflection on the Second Reading for November 8th, 2020:
Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

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1 Thessalonians
4.13-18

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.

For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the Archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
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Pause. Pray.

And then read more...

Grief is unpredictable. Some days, it’s an ache, a low buzzing feeling of absence and a sense that the world is not as it should be. Other days, it’s so sharp and urgent that you lose your breath. I don’t know a single person who doesn’t have grief as their daily cross. We have all experienced loss — a parent, grandparent, child, spouse, extended family member, sibling, or friend. Grief is such a normative part of human existence that the Gospels go out of their way to share with us that Jesus Himself wept at the death of His friend Lazarus, His friend who He knew He was going to bring back from the dead.


Grief can change how we perceive the world. It can make us angry and bitter. It can steal our joy and make memories so rosy and perfect that we believe we can never be truly happy in the wake of our loss.


Grief is normal, but how we experience and talk about it as Christians matters. Saint Paul reminds us here that, as Christians, grief has a companion in hope. This hope doesn’t erase our grief, but it transforms it. Our grief is a reminder of our love for the people who have gone before us and our call as Christians to pray for them as they make their final journey to Heaven. Hope is planted in our hearts by the grace of God to remind us that this life does not end when our bodily life ends. Our hope in Christ is that everything we have lost — our loved ones, our own lives, and even our bodies — will be returned to us more fully than we ever had them in this life. 


This world feels broken when we lose something we love dearly. The gap they leave is a reminder of how deeply important they were in our lives. But those who have fallen asleep in Christ aren’t gone. They are praying for us, present to our lives, in many ways more than they ever could have been during their earthly life. When we consume the Body of Christ at Mass, we are in perfect communion with them.


The hope we have in Christ is that this time when we cannot be with them will be a blink of an eye compared to the eternity we will enjoy with them in Heaven. So yes, we grieve. We grieve because we cannot help but grieve. But our grief is bathed in the hope of eternity. Our answer to grief in light of that hope is to work every day to live in such a way that we will be reunited with those we have loved and lost.


Let us make ourselves ready so that when the final trumpet sounds, our hope will be realized and our grief will finally end.




Stephanie Potter

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