Human logic rejects any loss, especially the loss of loved ones such as a child. The taste of absence is bitter, the silence and emptiness are heartbreaking. It is only the miracle of faith that can make us see life where there is death. A faith that in time becomes more and more luminous.

No one better than the Virgin Mary knows of this suffering, not only because of the loss of the beloved son, but because he was absolutely innocent and good. Human understanding is not up to the same level and never will be. But that is what it is all about. She did not seek an explanation. She did not dive into her thoughts, but rather into her faith, supported by the promises and words of her own son.

She listened, she limited herself to silence, and to listen to what God was asking of her: ‘Give me the Son, in exchange for all these children. You are not the mother of one, you are the mother of all. Death is but a new birth of him and of you. Your son dies and you are born as a mother’. This is also what step 7 of The Way of the Heart teaches us: “What seems paradoxical is that this very renunciation or surrender, although it means at its core a letting go or leaving something, a death in some sense, makes us feel alive, even with a renewed and fuller life, than if we had held on to what we surrendered. It seems that to strip away or die to something… gives life, gives birth to something new. This experience is, in short, the experience that shapes in us a “Eucharistic” life, a life given, a life capable of giving life by surrendering, renouncing, dying to something”.

This may seem utopian, but each of those who have lost a loved one and have relied on the One who never fails and never dies, can verify it by experience. A new birth takes place that engenders them to a motherhood and fatherhood they could never have imagined. He who ‘makes all things new’ made loss a gain and death a rebirth. Absence becomes populated with new spiritual children, and emptiness is transformed into fullness.

But the fire of faith is nourished by the wood that each one of us brings. “In suffering, God’s first response is not a discourse or a theory, but it is his walking with us, his being at our side. Jesus let himself be touched by our pain, he walked the same path as us and does not leave us alone, but frees us from the burden that oppresses us by carrying it for us and with us” Pope Francis. 

We cannot do it alone; we need to support one another and nourish our hope in that of our brothers and sisters. Lord, may our communities shelter and support those who have lost a child, being living announcements of your risen life, always new and renewing.

International Editorial Team

Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network