Good Cry, Good Prayer
You keep track of all my sorrows.
You have collected all my tears in your bottle.
You have recorded each one in your book.
Psalm 56:8
Tears
There are moments when feelings of sadness, anger, or frustration are so great there are no words to pray. The emotions feel overhwhelming and the words seem too small to articulate the depth of loss. Watching the devastating images and loss from Afghanistan and Haiti, seeing the victims of hurricane and fire damage, and hearing about more and more COVID cases has made this past week one of those times. The tears are right at the surface of my heart. You may be feeling the same way. When this happens, I have found that those tears can serve as the most beautiful and healing prayer.
Tears as Prayer
Since losing my son three years ago, I often have no words to pray. The first time this happened was in the beginning of my grief journey. I was at church and couldn’t stop crying. I found myself staring at a big teardrop that had fallen from my eye onto the pew in front of me. I just stared at it, honoring all the pain and sadness inside of it, and prayed to God, “This is for You. You know everything inside that tear. Take it from me and hold it for me.” That prayer was such a helpful release for me. It gave me such comfort to picture God holding my tears.
Another time I was at the dinner table, about to say a prayer with my husband, and I burst into tears. I sat in silence for a moment and then said, “Amen.” Nothing else was needed, and I felt such calm and relief afterwards. Those tears seemed to carry every thought and emotion that felt too big for language. This quote from Rita Schiano speaks to my experience. “Tears are God’s gift to us. Our holy water. They heal us as they flow.”
An Honest Dialogue with the Divine
Crying brings you to a place of pure, raw honesty. In the middle of a cry, you are admitting everything that has been hidden in your heart and allowing it to flow to the surface of your being. It is in that authenticity that you are in a place of full surrender and humility before God. There is no language that can match the depth of this type of emotion. When you are crying, words are not needed. A dialogue with the Divine takes place beyond thoughts and articulation.
Tears in the Christian Tradition
Tears as a sacred experience can be traced back to centuries ago in the Christian tradition. Weeping is mentioned frequently in the books of the Hebrew scriptures and in many of the Psalms. Jesus includes those “who weep now” in the blessed ones of the Beatitudes (Lk 6:21).
Tears for the desert fathers and mothers were the doorway to holiness. Tears, “confirmed humans’ readiness to allow their life to fall apart in the dark night of the soul, and their willingness to assume new life in the resurrection of the dead.”[1] St. Ephrem the Syrian (303-373), a Doctor of the Church said, “Until you have cried, you don’t know God.” The Syrian Fathers of his time proposed that tears be a sacrament in the Church. [2]
St. John Climacus (579-649) believed tears are a way of knowing ourselves. “As a symbol of washing, tears cleanse the eyes for us to see but also for us to be seen by God in prayer.” [3] Pause and reflect back to the last time you cried. Do you remember a sense of raw acknowledgement, honesty, and authenticity before yourself? And perhaps before God?
In the Middle Ages, weeping became more systematized and ritualized as many Christian writers created instructional guides on the process of holy crying because it was a way to communicate with the Divine. In Catherine of Siena’s Dialogue, she lists five varieties of tears as stages of growth. She notes that, “tears are efficacious as vessels of genuine devotion from the heart, as intercessory tools, and as necessary for proceeding from one spiritual stage to the next. [4]
A Way to Connect with our Christian Call
Tears can act as a powerful prayer of self-comfort and they can serve as a channel of solidarity with a suffering world. While addressing a crowd in the Phillippines in January of 2015, Pope Francis was asked a question by a 12 year-old girl tearfully explaining her desperate living conditions. “Why did God let this happen to us?” she asked. Pope Francis answered, “Only when we too can cry about the things that you said are we able to come close to replying to that question. Certain realities in life we only see through eyes that are cleansed through tears.” Pope Francis went on to talk about the importance of learning how to weep when we see suffering in the world. “Let us not forget this lesson. The great question of why so many children suffer. She did this crying. And the response that we can make today is let us learn, really learn, how to weep.” Francis’ speech resonates with St. Catherine of Siena’s “stages of tears” when she says by the fourth level of crying, a person has “arrived at the perfect love of [her] neighbor.” [5]
An Empty Place of Trusting God
When we cry we are opening our hearts and sitting in a raw, empty, and vulnerable place. We are finally ready to hand our deep sorrow over to God. With our hands lifted up in the mystery of it all, we are ready to trust that God will hold the questions and sadness in the gentle palm of God’s hand. That open and empty space allows room for God’s healing grace to work within us and a hurting world.
You keep track of all my sorrows.
You have collected all my tears in your bottle.
You have recorded each one in your book. Psalm 56:8
God knows your tears, collects your tears, and will hold them to comfort you. Allow your tears to flow when they come to the surface. May you be open to the invitation that your tears can be your prayer of sorrow, your prayer of rejoicing, and your prayer of solidarity with others during this tumultuous time.
The Prayer of Tears
By Edward Hays
Lord, Beloved God,
since all communion with You is prayer,
may even my tears be psalms of petition
and canticles of praise to You.
This is a prayer that You value greatly:
the prayer of my tears;
it is a prayer that You always hear
for You are a compassionate and kind God.
And, Lord, I know You understand
that when I am overcome by my tears-
unable to speak or form a prayer-
that these very tears voice volumes of verse.
All truly great prayer
rises from deep inside
and springs spontaneously to the surface.
It would then seem
that from among the many beautiful prayers,
the sacred songs and canticles of praise,
my tears may be the best worship of all.
Help me not to be ashamed of them;
show me how I can let go of control
and let this prayer of my heart, my tears,
flow naturally and freely to You,
my Blessed Lord and Divine Lover.
In times of joy or sorrow,
blessed be my tears,
the holy prayers of my heart.
Amen.
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How have you experienced tears as prayer?
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[1] Jessie Gutgsell, “The Gift of Tears,” Anglican Theological Review 97, no. 2 (January 2015): 241.[2] Richard Rohr, “Blessed Are Those Who Mourn,” Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation (February 1, 2018). [3] John Chryssavgis, “A Spirituality of Imperfection: The Way of Tears in Saint John Climacus,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 37.4 (2002): 266. [4] Gutgsell, 245.[5] Gutgsell, 244.