A Prayer for Wednesday, February 23, 2011

“Blessed Are Those Who Mourn”

We mourn when we lose someone or something; we mourn because of the sense we have of the absence of someone or something that used to be there or that should be there.

Those who mourn are blessed because those who mourn face their losses and their empty places honestly and openly rather than living with false bravado and feigned invulnerability.

Those who mourn are blessed because those who mourn accept the comfort they need rather than pretending that they don’t need it and thus depriving themselves of it.

Those who mourn are blessed because they practice accepting the grace they need in the here and now which will make them especially ready to receive the grace that will come to them in the there and then.

Those who mourn are blessed because they embrace, with great faith and hope, the fact that they are not all that they should, could, or will be along with the fact that God will work in their lives to give them the comfort of ever-increasing wholeness and—one blessed day—absolute and complete wholeness.

O God, we mourn what we are not.

O God, we accept what we are.

O God, we live toward what we will be.

Amen.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).