Dealing with grief while continuing to minister

From a spiritual care point of view

Woman, why are you weeping?” Jesus asks Mary at the tomb. These words seem pertinent now, considering the challenges many religious communities are facing. The realities of smaller communities, relinquished ministries, and painful losses of beloved members are there. And yet, we can hear Jesus asking us, “Why are you weeping?” It is a reminder that Christ Jesus is our Lord, and he has the future in his good hands. 

Most of us tend to grieve the way life was. We want back that person, that community, that ministry, that projected future. Even the person with an addiction wonders what life will be like in recovery without the addiction, which was like a friend, and without the people who were involved in the addictive behaviors. Will life really be better without the substance that helped soothe depression, anxiety, perfectionism, or another condition?

Change is difficult for a lot of us. We fear the unknown, and no matter how well we strategize, the future is ultimately unknown. We must plan ahead, and religious communities are very good at that. It is the emotional upheaval of grief and loss that can cause sadness, isolating behaviors, hopelessness, or languishing. Jesus asks, “Why are you weeping?” He does not command, “Stop weeping.”

“Grief must be expressed,” says David Kessler, author of Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. The healthy griever finds avenues for expressing grief, sharing it, and learning from it. This might be through counseling, in a grief support group, by writing a letter to a soul-friend, in prayer and journaling, or through many other options. We find resilience in a community of grievers because loss can function as a great people-connector. With others who have endured a loss, we can experience our grief in a safe place and recognize that we are not the only ones feeling as we do, even if we have our own unique experiences.

Grief is part of the human experience. It is a powerful emotion and a mystery. We never get to the bottom of it. Grief can be faced, coped with, and suffered through. There can be new life on the other side of it. Grief cannot be ignored, delayed, or abbreviated. If it is, it can become a dangerous emotion surfacing at unexpected times and in unrecognizable ways, such as angry outbursts, depression, or addiction. These can disrupt caring relationships, backfiring on the griever who needs those compassionate relationships more than ever.

Grief takes time. It has its own calendar. We must be attentive to our grief and not be told we should be over it. And yet, we need to listen if someone close suggests that we might see a counselor for our grief. It can become depression if we are not careful. Everyone grieves differently, and it takes different amounts of time for the acute grieving process to move forward. 

Jesus asked Mary, “Woman, why are you weeping?” and he also asks, “Whom are you seeking?” We could ask ourselves, “Whom or what am I seeking?” Are we being invited to seek God and God alone? Is it helpful to seek the way life was? In his book, The Five Things We Cannot Change and the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them, David Richo names the first of what he calls the five givens of life: everything changes and ends. Life changes. We cannot stop that. 

In our Christian contemplation, we might ask ourselves if God is inviting us to something new. We might ask God for eyes to see new life and hearts to appreciate it fully. Those in vocation ministry have the opportunity to meet young people who are sorting out their life direction. As young people work through how to offer their lives to God—wherever that takes them—can vocation ministers relish the “something new” that is emerging? Can they value and celebrate their role in young people’s lives? Can communities join them in affirming the gifts of new life received in accompanying the young (and sometimes the not-so-young)?

These questions change the perspective. We might focus our energies in the grieving process on what God is creating in us. There might be suffering; it might be very painful, and yet, there might be some new life that comes from the separation, loss, or death. Is that not resurrection? Could it be that letting go of prior ministries, properties, and ways of being can let a new generation in religious life create new ways for our charisms to be alive in the world? Vocation ministers can keep these questions before their communities and encourage them to look at the broad picture of religious life. 

This is part of the great mystery that grief is. It is a precious, faith-strengthening, and yes, life-giving mystery. Not one we wanted, and perhaps not one we chose, but still life-giving. God sends surprises to help us through. Along the path, there can be new insight, new purpose, new meaning, and gratitude. We may find deep gratitude for what was and hopefulness about what is to come—all of it part of being alive, vital, and human. Jesus calls our name as he called Mary, and we can recognize him and help write the new chapter of our story. 

—Nancy Santamaria

From a theological and personal view

In the current context of religious communities in the United States, there are unmistakable absences of what was known, beloved, and cherished. Many works, ministries, traditions, and—most importantly—beloved persons have now passed on. These absences are felt by those in religious life not only physically and institutionally, but also spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically. Faith assures us that resurrection is part of our story as Christians. But being human requires us to acknowledge that the death is a death. We can only keep vigil with each other in the space between these two understandings.

Before I share my own experience of faith and loss, allow me to reflect theologically on death and the very foundation of Christianity. Christianity’s origin is intimately bound up with the death of Jesus of Nazareth, and thus, with grief and loss. The potential of this rich insight for our Christian, human lives has been regrettably weakened by the legacy of Enlightenment-era modern thinkers who pathologized the grief response of early Jesus followers to create a reductionist version of Christian origins. This view of grief created a discomfort around our faith tradition’s primal relationship to the human experience of loss, and perhaps led to shyness or even avoidance of the centrality of grief in the birth of the Christian experience.

Yet, it is undeniable that in Roman Catholicism especially, grief is integral to many of the tradition’s most cherished aesthetic treasures: Michelangelo’s Pieta, Palestrina’s “Lamentations of Jeremiah,” and the Passion Façade of La Sagrada Familia, to name just a few. The contemporary reimagining of traditional devotions—such as a Stations of the Cross for the Earth and Stations for the University of Central America martyrs—were born from a proper theological instinct: that the wider Body of Christ is inscribed in the self-same Paschal Mystery of Jesus, which is itself sealed into creation. 

Of course, there remains the danger of phrases like Paschal Mystery becoming pseudo-entities, cut off from our very human lives. However, death and dying are not only aesthetic elements of Christian art. Instead, they point back to the disorientation and disillusionment of loss, and they must remain so if the Eucharistic celebrations are to be true liturgies of the people. For we congregate, pray, and minister in a world saturated in loss, a world we are integrally part of, and it is as part of this world that we make our “spiritual sacrifice of praise” (Heb. 13:15).

Absence is an enduring feature of this world, and accordingly, it is part of the context for the presence of God. Thus, for the French sacramental theologian Louis-Marie Chauvet and the American biblical scholar and theologian Carey Walsh, absence and presence are two sides of the same coin, inseparably linked. Sacramental presence, Chauvet suggests, is mediated through Christ’s absence, and he points to the Emmaus story as an illustration (Luke 24:13-35). It is only because of this absence that sacramental presence is made possible, and one might dare say, humanly credible.

“But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go,” Jesus says (John 16:7). We could put this another way: grief and loss bear divine and human presence. There is no direct, immediate realization of presence, but only one where we must struggle with the strangeness of that presence as mediated through absence. “He has been raised; he is not here,” says the angel (Mark 16:6). Other scriptural texts come alive under this hermeneutic. Did Jesus not say he would be found in the suffering and the stranger (Matt. 25:31-46)? Did Jesus not disappear from the disciples after they consumed him? (Luke 24:31) Were the disciples not admonished by the angel for looking at the sky for Jesus’ return? (Acts 1:11). Or what of Saint Teresa of Avila and her lovely poem that begins, “Christ has no body now but yours”?

In my own experience, I spent hours upon hours, year upon year, in the pew gazing at the Crucified One before Mass. While visiting loved ones in the cemetery as a child—always on a gray, overcast day it seemed—I was confronted by large, melancholic depictions of Calvary. Jesus on the Cross. Mary, the Beloved Disciple, and the women surrounding him. Mourning and weeping. At times, as a child, this was too much for me to take in; yet I was drawn to it. Mysterium tremendum et fascinans.

 This is the Catholicism of the “Stabat Mater,” the hymn to the suffering Virgin Mother. Some argue that this Catholic theological aesthetic privileges death rather than resurrection. Yet, it formed me interiorly to receive events of loss and absence in my life. I would not have known then that the long time my mother would have us in church before Mass each Sunday, with quiet time to behold images of Christ’s body, would inculcate this sensitivity. I am aware each time I sit in a church before a crucifix to be present to death in its many iterations, and not only physical death.

This perspective itself becomes complicated, for if I presume that the grief and darkness bear a gift, I am by that fact shielding myself from the tomb, which reveals itself as a womb only in that mysterious convergence of time, desire, and healing. 

The Triduum of our lives knows no shortcuts. 

—Erik Ranstrom

From the view of someone enriched by religious

Throughout my life, I have had the honor and privilege to be impacted by vowed religious. Before I left for college, I sat down with Father Harold, a priest at my home parish who was a dear friend of my family. I was apprehensive about moving away from home and being in full control of my spiritual life for the first time. I was born and raised Catholic, and going to Mass on Sunday was never a question for me. This was a ritual I was determined to keep up, but I was nervous about getting caught up in the college scene and letting my faith fall to the back burner. His advice to me that day was to receive the Eucharist as much as I possibly could, and the rest would follow. 

Taking that advice to heart, I went off to college and started going to daily Mass. That is where I met Father Philip, the university chaplain. He met me where I was and made the chapel feel like it was my second home. He gave me space to ask questions, seek healing for parts of myself I didn’t realize I had buried, and helped me find the true grace in the sacrament of Confession.

I then started getting more involved in campus ministry and got to live out my faith by serving at soup kitchens, going on mission trips, and becoming the head sacristan of the university. I developed a deeper relationship with the sisters and lay campus ministers, and their impact truly made me the person I am today. Through their guidance and encouragement, I went on a pilgrimage to Rome and Assisi to follow the lives of Saint Francis and Saint Clare, and it was there that I had a true spiritual awakening and experienced a desire to pursue my vocation in ministry. 

I have been blessed with incredible role models of faith to turn to throughout my life, and I am eternally grateful for the ways they exemplify God’s love and mercy to me each day. The quotation popularly attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi, “Preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words,” is a Franciscan value that I keep in the forefront of my mind. For me, Franciscans have been the Gospel personified. They have been a constant presence, inviting me to enter more deeply into relationship with God by attending Mass and having open and honest conversations about faith. Franciscans made me feel part of the community.

 I am a product of what is possible when extraordinary collaboration among priests, religious, and laity is encouraged. I hope to be part of that continued collaboration of faith for all those I encounter. 

I know fear and grief can be wrapped up in the changes and loss that religious communities are experiencing today. Our church is changing, and that can be scary, especially for those who have dedicated their entire lives to service and the church. As a laywoman who has been shaped by those in religious life, I hope this message can provide hope: your legacy lives on in me and in all those you’ve touched.            

—Jillian Tutak

Nancy Santamaria is a spiritual care advisor at Saint John Vianney Center. She holds a master’s in holistic spirituality and in art. 

Erik Ranstrom is the manager of spiritual care at Saint John Vianney Center. He holds a Ph.D. in theology.

Jillian Tutak is a spiritual care advisor at Saint John Vianney Center. She holds a master’s degree in theology and ministry.