Lamentations 1:16–21

I weep — My eyes! My eyes! They stream with tears!

How far from me is anyone to comfort, anyone to restore my life.

My children are desolate; the enemy has prevailed.

Zion stretches out her hands, with no one to comfort her;

The Lord has ordered against Jacob his foes all around;

Jerusalem has become in their midst a thing unclean…

My young women and young men have gone into captivity.

I cried out to my lovers, but they failed me.

My priests and my elders perished in the city;

How desperately they searched for food, to save their lives!

Look, O Lord, at the anguish I suffer!

My stomach churns, and my heart recoils within me:

How bitter I am!

Outside the sword bereaves — indoors, there is death.

Hear how I am groaning; there is no one to comfort me.

All my enemies hear of my misery and rejoice over what you have done.

Bring on the day you proclaimed, and let them become like me!

Let all their evil come before you and deal with them

As you have so ruthlessly dealt with me for all my rebellions.

My groans are many,

my heart is sick.

When we survey the desolation wrought upon the face of the earth by the awe-ful forces of nature and by the desperately-grasped brute force of empire, we enter into a communion of the suffering. For so many of our brothers and sisters — those hidden in plain sight fleeing genocides, perched on overcrowded and ill-fated watercraft; those threatened with family upheaval, exclusion, and exile to lands utterly foreign and often deadly; those made newly homeless in the wake of life-crushing natural disasters; those paralyzed with grief when death has touched one whom they love — this communion is not abstraction, but lived reality. In times such as these we mourn with those who are mourning; not because we feel guilty for enjoying comfort while others are robbed of it, and certainly not because it is trendy to “care,” but because we have chosen a way of life which constantly calls us into a joyous exchange.

In the first centuries of the Common Era, those who adopted this way of life were pejoratively called “Christians.” They preferred to refer to themselves collectively — with weighty and wide phrases like “the Body of Christ,” or simply: “The Church.” Everything among them was held in common. Not only were they bound together by their shared profession of faith in the Messiah and their loyalty to the successors of His apostles, but just as radically they accepted His Kingship, rejecting popularly accepted notions of social status and individualism by redistributing all of their food, money, land, and property communally. This theological and practical unity was quite inextricably woven together with a profound spiritual sharing-in-common of the possessions of their hearts: the joys and sorrows of the whole Church (see Acts 2:42–47, 2 Corinthians 8:9–15, Ch. III-V of the Letter from St. Ignatius Bishop of Antioch to the Church in Ephesus ca. 107 AD, Philippians 2:1–4, Romans 12:10–16).

We do well to understand that the communal sharing of sorrow in particular is a rich spiritual reality wholly distinct from (and perhaps standing in opposition to) the so-often empty “thoughts and prayers” mentality of contemporary public discourse. We are perhaps all-too-familiar with trite, recycled slogans meant ultimately for easy self-congratulation which help make us appear (if only to ourselves) compassionate; while ultimately we encounter no one, risk nothing. Counter to this may we seek to (re)discover that ancient way of life in which we find ourselves weeping silent, hidden tears in physical or spiritual proximity to another human being by deeply mourning a tragedy or injustice not our own. This kind of proximity by definition holds a startling potential to make us uniquely and personally vulnerable, open to being drawn into undignified movements of the soul. Such movements will be as varied and contextual as the sorrows experienced, but they will invariably require us to say to the Other (just as the early Church did): All that I have is yours. All that I am able to do, I will do. This could mean anything from the ancient practice of fasting, to holding a hand in a quiet cemetery, to pouring out oneself through hours of fervent prayer in a sacred place of worship, to carrying a placard and shouting in the streets, to sharing a simple meal in grief-stricken silence with another. In our homes it could — and perhaps must — mean engaging in those bizarre, radical acts called hospitality.

We must also remember that there are times we can do little else but grieve in anguish while shaking a fist at the heavens and groaning to God through clenched teeth (see Jeremiah 15:16–18): Where are You? How — dare — You.

This communion of suffering exists through and in and with the One who has pioneered and perfected the Way before us; who blazed the trail in a manner so cosmically significant that even amidst the most unimaginable suffering we are not ripped apart, but pulled closer together. We are not the first, the worst, the last, nor the only ones to suffer.

Often it is appropriate, acceptable, and necessary to gather together in the dust of sorrow to present our disillusionment, confusion, anger, and suffering to the Creator; not to berate, but to demand a response — and listen for it. Just as Jesus Himself did in the most profoundly desolate moments of His life, we may struggle to even muster the strength to verbalize our anguish, frequently finding the spiritual currency with which to express our interior frenzy in music or sacred scripture; whether it be the inspired, fist-shaking, prophetic words of Jeremiah, the rampaging, sonic onslaught of the Mars Volta, or the gut-wrenching harp-accompanied poetry of King David whose twenty-second Psalm Jesus hung from his own lips as he was publicly tortured to death.

That particular Psalm rests in Hope, proclaiming with bold anticipation that: God “has not spurned or disdained the misery of this poor wretch, did not turn away from me, but heard me when I cried out.” But it does so only after screaming with honest and righteous indignation until red in the face:

“My God — my God — why have you abandoned me?”