Thought for the Day – 17 June – Patience during Bereavement

Thought for the Day – 17 June – Meditations with Fr Richard Frederick Clarke SJ (1839-1900)

PATIENCE
Meditations for a Month

Patience during Bereavement

1. Pure human love, especially the love of father and mother for their children, is one of the most beautiful things in the natural order.
   It interweaves itself with our very nature.
   Husband and wife, brother and sister and above all, the children who are in a special sense our own, are a part of ourselves; they are our own by birth, our own-by constant association, our own by a thousand ties of love.
   Oh, how sorrowful it is to lose one of our little circle, to see the empty place, to miss their looks of love, the sweet sound of their voice.
   Then indeed we have need of patience and must beg that we may not grieve like those who have no hope but, may humbly bow our necks under God’s chastising Hand.
2. Patience! how are we to obtain it under the crushing blow? How are we to recognise the love of God in thus taking away the light of our eyes from us? It is indeed difficult and, for a time, the absorbing grief may overpower us. But we can always pray, we can always make an act of resignation, we can always say: ‘Not as I will but as Thou wilt!’
   It is the Lord, let Him do what is good in His sight.
   Has this been my conduct when one whom I dearly loved was taken from me?
3. There are many motives of consolation when friends and dear ones fade away or die. If they died in their innocence, how we, ought to rejoice when we think of them with Christ in Heaven! If they had sinned and done penance, we ought to rejoice that God gave them the grace of dying a good death. We can always console ourselves by praying for them. We can make their departure a reason for living a better and a holier life that we may not fail to meet them again before the Throne of God.
   All this I will do more henceforward.