A Theology of Tears...

Psalm 56:8 "He stores my tears in His bottle and records them in His book." 

People make the mistake of saying, 'For crying out loud!' as if crying out loud was a negative thing. Jesus cried out loud and Jesus blessed many people who cried out loud to Him. I have met many people who were wounded as children by being told that they were not allowed to cry. They proceeded to spend a lifetime with Jesus learning that tears are not only not shameful, but actually a gift and a tool of prayer when united with God. 

There are many kinds of tears (tears of repentance, tears of joy, tears of sorrow and tears of manipulation) -perhaps manipulative tears need to be corrected by a parent, but one must walk very carefully into the human heart of a child to guide them in this, because only God understands the depths of one's soul (even as a child) and telling someone they are not allowed to cry emotionally constipates them. There was a religious sister I knew well once who said that for 50 years she never cried because her mom wouldn't let her as a child and that she was only able to come to spiritual healing with God once she met me, saw my unconditional love for her even in (and especially in) tearful moments and after weeping almost non-stop for a year. I spoke with another lady a few days ago who said the same thing. Crying is cathartic (its not a sin and its definitely not evil) -but by uniting one's tears with heaven one begins to weep differently -powerfully -because the tears of Jesus and Mary move the Heart of God.

My favorite passage of the Bible is also the shortest passage. It is from the Gospel of John and the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It says, 'Jesus wept.' Jesus cried! Yes, even Jesus Christ cried, and not just in the depths of His Passion and Agony. He was a human person who felt emotion and when He saw His friend Mary Magdalene crying over her brother Lazarus He broke down crying as well. He cried over Jerusalem and the hard, closed hearts that He met on His way (I understand that -people's closed and hard hearts make me cry all of the time.) Its tears of pity that one hopes actually softens the hearts that are hard and closed. Its possible. Drips of water on a rock over a period of time eventually wear away a hole into the stone. In the same way tears can soften or open a passage into the hardest of hearts. In fact, Jesus blessed tears so much that He said in Scripture (Luke 19:40)  "I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!" And sometimes stones had to cry out... look at crying statues. When people's hearts are too hard, God uses stone to weep over sin and compassion other's pain.

When people cried, Jesus blessed them. Look at the woman from Nain who Jesus met on the road. He saw a woman weeping over her son who had died and it moved His Heart with such compassion that He raised the boy from the dead. St. Augustine said that his mother St. Monica spent years weeping over his life of sin. He wrote: "She had wept over me as one dead, yet cried to you that I might be raised by you. She had carried me forth upon the bier of her thoughts, so that you might say to the son of the widow, Young man, I say to you, arise, and he might return to life and begin to speak, and you might restore him to his mother." And it was St. Ambrose who said to St. Monica, "It is not possible that the son of so many tears should perish."

In Luke 7:36-50 Jesus defends Mary Magdalene's tears: "One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, so Jesus went into the Pharisee’s house and sat at the table.  A sinful woman in the town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house. So she brought an alabaster jar of perfume  and stood behind Jesus at his feet, crying. She began to wash his feet with her tears, and she dried them with her hair, kissing them many times and rubbing them with the perfume. When the Pharisee who asked Jesus to come to his house saw this, he thought to himself, “If Jesus were a prophet, he would know that the woman touching him is a sinner!”Jesus said to the Pharisee, “Simon, I have something to say to you.”Simon said, “Teacher, tell me.”Jesus said, “Two people owed money to the same banker. One owed five hundred coins and the other owed fifty. They had no money to pay what they owed, but the banker told both of them they did not have to pay him. Which person will love the banker more?” Simon, the Pharisee, answered, “I think it would be the one who owed him the most money. Jesus said to Simon, “You are right.”  Then Jesus turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? When I came into your house, you gave me no water for my feet, but she washed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss of greeting, but she has been kissing my feet since I came in. You did not put oil on my head, but she poured perfume on my feet. I tell you that her many sins are forgiven, so she showed great love. But the person who is forgiven only a little will love only a little.” Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” The people sitting at the table began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”Jesus said to the woman, “Because you believed, you are saved from your sins. Go in peace.”

One of my favorite apparitions is Our Lady of La Salette where the Blessed Mother appeared crying. It was her tears that moved the heart of God to have mercy and grant great graces to the country of France.

There is much we can gain from meditating on the gift of tears.

God loves and blesses tears. He said to Hezekiah “I have heard your tears…” He heard Hannah’s prayer crying in the temple. He answered Ester's and Judith's and Susanna's tearful prayers. He even answered David's tears. There is power in tearful prayers and love -to the point that the Eastern Church marks tears as a sign of the Holy Spirit and as a special gift in prayer.  Jesus, grant me this grace of the Holy Spirit as well. 

We need the ‘courage to cry’ in the world in a way. We need to 'peek’ into Jesus’ Interior life in this…because He Himself set an example for us with tearful prayer. In Gethsemane Scripture says He prayed to His Father 'with loud cries, prayers and supplications’. In fact if He suffered so greatly that He sweat blood, He most likely cried blood as well. On Calvary the last act Jesus did before He died was to cry out loud (imagine that!). It says,“And Jesus cried out.”

           

The tears of our Savior are powerful (and our tears united to His are a powerful prayer as well.) Take a second and meditate on:

How would Jesus have responded to His Mother’s tears? –on Joseph’s deathbed, for example?

How would Jesus have responded to His little sister’s tears? To a baby or child’s tears?

How did Jesus respond to the wailing woman in the funeral procession?

How did Jesus respond to Mary Magdalene’s tears at Lazarus’ tomb?

How does Jesus respond to My tears?

When Jesus saw people crying, He cried too.

How did Jesus respond to the apostles crying out to Him during the storm at sea?

How did Jesus (interiorly) respond to Peter crying after denying Him three times? (He looked ‘with love’.)

How did Jesus respond to the parents of the little girl who died before He raised her from the dead? (He calmed their tears and healed her.)

How did Jesus’ Heart respond to the crying of the Holy Innocents’ slaughter (‘Rachel’s tears’)?

How did Jesus react to tears?

What is God teaching us about tears? 

Scientists have studied the chemical make-up of tears and discovered that it is the same thing as sweat -both liquids have the purpose of cleansing the body of poison that stress causes. That is why men who sweat so much tend to need to cry less. Tears cleanse poison -and on the spiritual level, by praying with tears and through the intercession of Jesus' and Mary's tears, the spiritual poison of evil, sickness, death, despair, etc., is cleansed from our lives. 

For a long time I have had a devotion to the tears of the Blessed Mother. There is a Chaplet of Our Lady's tears that I have prayed for almost 20 years and it is a powerful weapon against evil. As I pray I meditate on each tear being a rose… a shower of tears is a shower of roses... What does Our Lady's tears do? They call on (tug on) the Heart of the Father -and earthly tears united to Jesus' and Mary's have a dimension of Divine Love within them. The infant tears of Mary were as pure and holy as Her tears on Calvary. So often we pray to honor the blood shed on Calvary, but what about the tears of Jesus and His Mother begging for the salvation of the world? Here is a beautiful chaplet to pray:

There is much, much more I could write on this subject (I'd love to do an entire retreat on tears), but this is enough (at least for today). When you don't know how to pray the next time you encounter a seemingly hopeless situation, turn towards Jesus and Mary's tears. If a child's tears can melt the heart of a human parent, how much more can the tears of Our Savior and His Mother melt the Heart of God.