Rare is the person who has suffered a grievous loss in death who does not experience some guilt. We recall the many things we left undone, or the unkind things we did to the deceased. The husband feels he should have been more considerate of his wife; a parent feels he should have spent more time with his child; a wife feels she should have made fewer demands on her husband. Part of our guilt comes from the fact that, after a person has died, we can no longer make it up to him in any way. The trouble with such guilt is that we expect ourselves to be perfect. We expect ourselves to be superhuman or even God. We must realize that we are all frail and imperfect beings. We need to accept God’s forgiveness, to forgive ourselves, as our loved ones in the other world would surely forgive us, and, above all, to be kind to ourselves instead of harsh critics.

One of the most unconstructive ways of dealing with grief is to….allow it to lead you to self-pity. The cure for self-pity is to take your mind off self and think of others. Consider an example. One lady loses her son, a medical student. She places her spacious home at the disposal of medical students and does everything she can for them in memory of her son. She turns the loss of her son into gain for other people’s sons. She is adjusted and happy. But another woman who loses her son shuts herself off from the world and goes into excessive, unhealthy grief. She becomes miserable. It is no wonder that self-pity has been called the most disintegrating of all emotions.

To see how faith can help us in our grief let us go back for a moment to the Gospel lesson. We can see the widow walking behind her son’s coffin on the way to the cemetery. Her hopes, her aspirations, her dreams were being buried in that coffin. “A young man who had died was being carried out” to the cemetery, says the Gospel. The procession of death was making its way through the city gates.

But there was another procession that day: Jesus and His disciples, and “a great crowd … with him.” The two processions met at the city gate. The mother’s grief touched Jesus and He said, “Do not weep.” Then He laid His hand on the coffin and commanded the dead one: “Young man, I say to thee, arise.” And he who was dead, sat up, and began to speak. And Jesus gave him to his mother.

Two processions! At the head of one is a corpse, symbolizing despair, grief, sorrow, the helplessness and the hopelessness of man. At the head of the other is Christ, the Eternal One, the Savior, sent to stop man’s tragic trek to the grave, to offer him salvation, hope, peace and life eternal. Small wonder that “fear seized them all!” Small wonder they cried out, “God has visited his people!”

As God visited His people then so He visits us today to grant us hope and comfort in our sorrow. Because of Christ we never grieve as though what has happened to us or to our loved one is the end of the story. It is not! The presence of Christ, the promise of the resurrection, the love of God from which nothing can separate us, the assurance of forgiveness, the confidence in eternal life, all mean hope. A hope that changes the very character of our grief.