Ash Wednesday
As Christians begin to observe Lent, the forty days before Easter, Father Richard highlights lamentation as an essential aspect of our faith:
Only one book in the Bible is named after an emotion: the book of Lamentations. Jeremiah is said to have written it to express grief over the people’s exile from Jerusalem when they were invaded by the Babylonians in 587 BCE. But the book reads more like an expression of universal sadness over the human situation, or what is often called “the tragic sense of life.” It’s notable for an almost entire lack of anecdotes or clear examples. Elsewhere in the prophetic writings, we read references to specific rulers, kingdoms, and moments in history. Not here. This is universal sadness. It is an invitation to universal solidarity.
The Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha expresses the devastation of grief and the longing for peace:
I wish I could wake up and find the electricity on all day long.
I wish I could hear the birds sing again, no shooting and no
buzzing drones.
I wish my desk would call me to hold my pen and write again,
or at least plow through a novel, revisit a poem, or read a play.
All around me are nothing
but silent walls
and people sobbing
without sound. [1]
Richard continues:
The prophets, and Jeremiah in particular, invite us into a divine sadness about reality itself, more than outrage at this or that event. The language then changes from anger at “sin” to pity over suffering and woundedness, yet still holds out for relief: “I will restore you to health and I will heal your wounds, says YHWH” (Jeremiah 30:17). Felt reality is invariably wept reality, and wept reality is soon compassion and kindness. Decisive and harsh judgments slip away in the tracks of tears.
As an example of this “slipping away,” my mind recalls the Roman church’s change in its official stance toward suicide, shifting from an emphasis on punishment to empathy for the person and family. I also think of Alcoholics Anonymous’ recognition that addiction isn’t a malicious moral failing but “a sickness to be cured.” Anger can’t make such switches. Tears can.
Has God changed, or have we just grown up enough to hear a grown-up God? Old Scripture passages of mercy and pity that once seemed sentimental or impossible begin to finally make sense—and we suddenly notice their frequency, although they were always there. “You had left in tears, but I brought you back. I guided you to springs of water by a smooth path” (Jeremiah 31:9, Jerusalem Bible). This process of transformation by way of tears is largely hidden and unconscious, characteristic of the work of the Spirit.
My belief is that tears, although they look like a mere emotive reaction, are much more: a deeply free action that many do not enjoy. They proceed from deep inside, where we are most truly ourselves. Tears reveal the depths at which and from which we care.
References:
[1] Mosab Abu Toha, “Sobbing Without Sound,” in Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza (City Lights Books, 2022), 25. Used with permission from City Lights Books.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage (Convergent, 2025), 96–98.
Image credit and inspiration: Noé Barnett, Untitled (detail), 2024, oil paint, Albuquerque. Click here to enlarge image. A painted image from art by Noé Barnett, inspired by Richard Rohr’s book The Tears of Things, a hand holds a single tear gently and with great care.
Story from Our Community:
When I feel filled with the rage of my ego, I find space inside myself by weeping. Tears, when they come, best move me through anger, rage, fear and toward release. Then comes some level of surrender. Thank you for offering us community space to speak and learn from the heart. I’m so grateful.
—Claire H.
