Mourning into Dancing Session 3

Opening

O God, whose nature is always to have mercy and to spare, grant everlasting rest to the souls of Thy servants and handmaidens, including ourselves at the time of our death. In Thy clemency, forgive them their sins and free them from the bonds of mortality, that they may be numbered among Thy redeemed and found worthy to enter into eternal life.

O God, who alone grants healing after death, we beseech Thee to wash away all earthly taint from Thy servants, that, as they believed and hoped in Thee in this life, they may now share in the joy of Thy eternal kingdom. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who lives and reigns with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

Objectives

Participants will communally and individually contemplate death, the ultimate contradiction of the good of life and existence which is the fulfillment of man's sin, i.e. choice against truth, love, life, and communion.

Methodology (Volunteer Actions)

Prepare as needed, and the presenting volunteer prepares and delivers a talk on the content of this session, uniting it with personal experience, what one has been taught about the subject/passage from Sacred Scripture or Magisterium, and sharing one's own reflection upon it.. Volunteers who are comfortable and gifted with helping someone grieve may lead small groups, participate in prayer teams, and lead one-on-ones. Volunteers who are not gifted or comfortable with doing so may help the priest with adoration, lecturing at the Mass, and arrange rooms according to needs. All assist with clean up according to the parish staff request, and for the sake of tidiness in any case.

In preparation for this talk one should first look at the personal content and then use the Magisterium sources and scripture according to how they are moved. Not all of the content below will be usable to you, in fact if your were to only use all of what is below it would not necessarily be a good talk, use this as a reference, find or use other quotes that may work as good or better which are more suited to what the Spirit draws out of you.

Magisterial Content

• "“God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. . . . It was through the devil’s envy that death entered the world” (Wis 1:13; 2:24)...As a result of original sin, human nature is weakened in its powers; subject to ignorance, suffering, and the domination of death; and inclined to sin....By his obedience unto death, Jesus accomplished the substitution of the suffering Servant, who “makes himself an offering for sin,” when “he bore the sin of many,” and who “shall make many to be accounted righteous,” for “he shall bear their iniquities.” Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father”...“[in] the poor and the suffering,... the Church recognizes the image of her poor and suffering founder.”...On this way of perfection, the Spirit and the Bride call whoever hears them to perfect communion with God: There will true glory be, where no one will be praised by mistake or flattery; true honor will not be refused to the worthy, nor granted to the unworthy; likewise, no one unworthy will pretend to be worthy, where only those who are worthy will be admitted. There true peace will reign, where no one will experience opposition either from self or others. God himself will be virtue's reward; he gives virtue and has promised to give himself as the best and greatest reward that could exist... "I shall be their God and they will be my people...." This is also the meaning of the Apostle's words: "So that God may be all in all." God himself will be the goal of our desires; we shall contemplate him without end, love him without surfeit, [and] praise him without weariness. This gift, this state, this act, like eternal life itself, will assuredly be common to all." (CCC 413, 418, 615, 786, 2550)

• "Sanctification is a sharing in the holiness of God who, through grace received in faith, progressively modifies human existence to shape it according to the pattern of Christ. This transfiguration can undergo heights and depths according to whether the individual obeys the promptings of the Spirit or submits again to the seductions of sin. Even after sin the Christian is raised up again by the grace of the sacraments and directed to go forward in sanctification. The whole Christian life is comprised of and summed up in charity, unselfish love for God and neighbor. Saint Paul calls charity the “fruit of the Holy Spirit” (Gal 5:22) and then indicates the many implications of this charity, both in his list of the fruits of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22-23) and in his hymn to charity (1 Cor 13:4-7)." (International Theological Commission, Doctrinal Document on the Select Questions on the Theology of God, the Redeemer (7 October 1995), §70-71.)

• "We can try to limit suffering, to fight against it, but we cannot eliminate it. It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater. It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love." Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter on the Christian Hope Spe salvi (30 November 2007), §37.

• Meaninglessness and Hiding from Truth

  • CCC 397

  • ST I, q.64, a.2

• Suffocation/Choice against life

  • CCC 2280–2281

  • ST II-II, q.20, a.3

• Hiding from the Light and Vulnerability

  • CCC 2843

  • ST II-II, q.25, a.6

• Hiding from Love, Without Vulnerability

  • CCC 2840

  • ST I, q.20, a.1–2

• God's Triumph over Suffering through Suffering

  • CCC 312-

  • ST I, q.22, a.2 

Scripture Content

1. Originating with Sin: Romans 6:23, Romans 5:12, Hebrews 9:27

2. Christ’s Victory Over Death: John 11:25-26, John 3:5-6, 1 Corinthians 15:54-55, Revelation 1:17-18

3. The Meaning of Death contravened attainment of Paradise, Health, and Full Communion: Philippians 1:21, 2 Corinthians 5:8

4. The Cost of Following Christ: Matthew 16:24-25 in tension with John 12:23-26, Galatians 2:20, 1 Corinthians 15:31, Mark 8:34-35

5. Union with Christ: Isaiah 52:13-53:12

6. Christ Weeping over death, destruction, and the lack of conversion of sinners: Luke 19:41-44, John 11:30-44

   1. Meaninglessness and Hiding from Truth (Himself) - John 8:32, 2 Corinthians 4:2-4

   2. Hiding from the Light and Vulnerability

      1. John 1:1-15

      2. Isaiah 53:3-5

      3. John 3:19–21

   3. Hiding from Love, Without Vulnerability

      1. 1 John 4:18

      2. Luke 15:20

   4. Works of the Enemy: Matthew 13:24–30

Personal Content w/ Example

1. Particular type of suffering. This is a helpful consideration for suffering: Due to the Present State of the World & Others and Due to Natural and Psychological Growth

2. Share a time when you sought to avoid suffering, whether it be a difficult obligation or trying to move away, but your problems followed you. Father Patrick Grode has always told me if you run from the cross, it will find you anyway, How have you come to realize this? How does running from the cross equate to disbelief in God's goodness?

3. Here we must also mention the enemy's work. With God, knowing His love, understanding the nature of our freedom as an ordained good, and knowing that sin is a use of the freedom that undermines itself and therefore us, it can seem simple or easy to suffer. However, we do not only struggle with what we endure from sin, we also have a formidable enemy, who, because of his jealousy, never ceases attempting to assist our death and destruction. He wants to make us like himself, eternally bearing our pain and separation from God, especially in our hurts (where we need God most), and our sins (where we seek often to erroneously but no less habitually to alleviate or fix our suffering in ways which only succeed in worsening our condition of pain and separation from God). When these three things converge in our lives, it is because of and also sustains our wounds. This negative experience of suffering is what Christ came to save us from, the kind that turns us evil, where we feel abandoned by faith and so abandon it, by life and so abandon life. Here are aspects of the same reality that our deepest hurts create.

   1. Meaningless and hiding from the Truth, Himself. "The truth hurts" is a secular belief, for Christians, "the truth will set [us] free" and we are called to "speak the truth in love" to others and ourselves. The enemy succeeds here, framing our sins and hurt, and anything they touch is unworthy of love and condemnable. However, the truth is we are malfunctioning, because God loves us truly, He established ways of our flourishing, and to contradict that is to die, but if we refuse to face the truth, that we need a Savior, we do not permit Jesus to save us, still lest to trust in His plan long-term to bring us home.  We may even convince ourselves of lies or partial truths, convincing ourselves that there is nothing to be sad about. If we do not accept that something is wrong or broken, we will never agree with what it takes to heal, still let that it is worth the effort.

   2. The "Suffocation" or hiding from the fullness of life. Out of rejection of what hurts (as we can choose against pain) we try to silence our pain (and that of others) and may even consider ourselves unworthy of life because of either but often both the way people who mattered to us or had a duty to our good more than others treated us and the sins we chose in those moments (repeating some of their errors and authoring some of our own). When we choose against life or doubt our belovedness here, we remain dead and dying. "He came that we would have life, and it to the full". We must breathe Christ into the suffocating places.

   3. The Hiding from Light and Hiding from further suffering, being known/vulnerable. The famous song "Iris" used in commercials frequently and echoed in the works of many artists says, "I don't want the world to see me, because I don't think that they'd understand". The Truth is they often don't, and that is why we hide from those who would and still more from Him whom we know does. Jesus is so bold to show us His wounds and let us touch them that we may know that He Who is Light, was also the Lamb slain for our Sins and those of others, that we may recognize that sometimes to love is to suffer, but it is worth it. Sometimes our hurts are the things that make us able to love and lovable, and in silencing our hurt and never healing from them, we keep them active, believing love is not possible. "[He] is the Light" which is not "overcome by the darkness." We must Shine His light into the places we don't want to see.

   4. The Hiding from Love without vulnerability, there is no love. When we insist that love cannot possibly touch us where we are hurting and believe there is no help, then and only then we refuse to touch and be touched where we hurt. In the this we refuse exactly what we need.

      1. CS LEWIS: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

   5. The enemy feeds these realities. When we hear the parable of the wheat and the weeds, we can think that what the enemy has sown ONLY brings destruction to the wheat (see above). Although there is a truth to that, it is not helpful. What is helpful is that although there are weeds and it does sometimes steal life from the wheat, the fact remains that there is wheat, and the wheat can take life from the weeds. The enemy succeeds in making us believe against what is good for us, taking life from the healing process, turning wounds into scars or necrotizing tissue, but here is precisely where, with Christ, His love and His Grace, we can take power back from the enemy and give it to God. The enemy can use our wounds against us, for example, being told that we were stupid, we may believe that we are incapable of certain jobs which God may have made us for, but when we subvert the enemy's control, we open up the idea of purpose and calling, which the Lord provides for and we can live in freedom knowing that the Lord provides for our lack, even if something are actually beyond us, we can obtain life to the full of our potential and cast mediocrity asunder. This can apply to any doubt and any wound. We must be in touch with the full reality of ourselves with Christ in order to live, be free, to know the truth, to understand love, to breathe, to see God, self, and others, to know our worth and goodness which God authored as much as we can, in all senses of the terms. In essence, the enemy succeeds by exploiting suffering to drive individuals away from God, leading them to despair, sin, and a loss of faith and hope.

Participant Interaction

1. Listen: Listen attentively to the talk.

2. Discuss in small groups:

1. Due to Natural and Psychological Growth: How does facing the stark realities of suffering and death challenge your inner strength and promote your personal development?

2. Due to the Present State of the World & Others: How do you understand the tangible consequences of sin in our world, and what does this reveal about our collective struggle?

3. Discuss the matter-of-fact nature of the wages of sin. With Christ’s suffering—even in its most exposed and painful forms—do you feel exposed by the consequences you face? Do you sense that our ongoing struggles testify to our sin? Are there times when you feel overwhelmed? What is the nature of the “white martyrdom” (as John of the Cross suggests, "we die though we do not die")? Why does God call us to forgive and surrender? How do we partake in the Kingdom of Heaven by suffering well?

3. Pray:

• Due to Natural and Psychological Growth: Pray for resilience and clarity amid overwhelming trials, asking for the strength to transform your struggles into growth.

• Due to the Present State of the World & Others: In prayer, ask for wisdom to perceive the broader implications of sin and suffering, and to embrace forgiveness and hope.

• Spend time in prayer contemplating Jesus comforting you as you once comforted Him—recognizing that while your love for Jesus is finite, His love transcends every human possibility, even on the Cross. Reflect on the call to cease further suffering through sin.

Feedback/Measurable Outcomes

1. Participants are presented with a clear sense that Christ wants us to not try to side-step our suffering but to pass through it, surrendering the discomfort to God who alone is trustworthy and loving.

2. Participants feel empowered and accompanied by God and their neighbor to endure their sufferings with a modicum of joy, knowing their belovedness, and strong conviction that sin is what has brought suffering about, knowing it to be the will of God.

3. Participation and authenticity by all.

Closing

1. Our Father...

2. Make announcements and anticipate the next session's content and how it connects.

3. Consider the optional content.

4. Emphasize rest, processing puts much stress on the body.

Optional Content

• Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary