Signposts On The Way

My youngest brother is 11 years younger than I am.  One of the saddest moments of my life was watching him, age 34 at the time, lean over the coffin of his wife in one last good-bye, as I hugged their 5-year-old daughter in my arms.

Grief is one heck of a signpost.  It’s one Jesus experienced as he mourned John (see today’s Gospel passage, Mt. 14:13-21).  Grief is a signpost toward suffering; it is also a signpost toward deepening.  It seems like the suffering itself is what digs down to the depths and compels us there.

And as we see of Jesus in today’s Gospel passage, that signpost of grief has a way of also pointing us – even in our grief – toward people who need our care and nourishment.  Suffering-induced deepening has a way of going hand-in-hand with having eyes and a heart for outreach to others.  The result: sacred abundance.