Tears

“I knew a woman who was a self-professed non-believer, though she was willing to believe. Her husband began bringing her to my parish. She attended faithfully for a period of time. One day she asked to meet with me and told me her story. With tears she said she had been in the Church during a service. She was looking at the icon of Christ on the iconostasis. “Why do I not know you?” she asked quietly. “And then I did,” she said. There was no argument, no promise of experience. There was, however, a “participatory adherence.” She was there and she was there repeatedly. Her question was not a critical examination. If anything, it was a cry of love though she had little hope of an answer.” (Father Stephen Freeman)

“The silence of tears reflects our surrender to God and to new patterns of learning and living. Through weeping, we learn by suffering and undergoing, not just by speculating and understanding. The connection between tears and silence is important in this context. Tears are another way, a tangible way of addressing our pain and our panic. They are another, a passionate way of knowing our passions. They are the articulation of our grief, the wording of our desire. The greater our love, the greater the corresponding sense of grief.” (Deacon John Chryssavgis)

“One of the most serious mistakes we can make is to refuse to express our grief or to keep it bottled up…unexpressed grief …causes…physical and mental ailments. Modern psychiatry has emphasized that when the eyes refuse to cry, other organs in the body will begin to cry with all kinds of illnesses resulting. Thus a very constructive way of expressing grief is to let the tears flow. Unfortunately in our culture we often equate tears with weakness…Yet tears have nothing to do with weakness or lack of faith. When Lazarus died, St. John clearly tells us that "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). And the next verse says very simply but profoundly; "And the Jews said, 'See how much he loved him.'" The fact that Jesus wept teaches us that sorrow is natural. Jesus wept even though he is the Source of life. Tears are an expression of love. Even the sure knowledge of eternal life will not take all the grief out of the human heart when we lose a loved one. St. Paul says, "Do not grieve as others who have no hope." He is not saying that we should not grieve, but that we should grieve with Christian hope.” (Holy Monastery of Axion Estin)

“Christ's tears tell us that God wants to co-suffer with us to the full extent. It was not enough for Him to weep from the heavens over our disaster. No, He came down to us, entered the crowd of weepers and wept with them…The Lord Christ's actions reach through the ages. Weeping with Martha and Mary at the tomb of Lazarus, He weeps also with us at the burials of our family and friends. We are not alone, no matter how the devil tries to suggest otherwise. However there is a time to weep and a time to laugh (Eccl. 3:4). The Lord raises Lazarus and wipes away both His own and our tears. For, all is well that ends well. It will be well for us—He will resurrect our close ones, too. And He will resurrect us.” (Priest Leonid Kudryachov)

“When it comes to the loss of our loved ones, we must keep in mind one fact: weeping for the departed, we actually weep for ourselves. The soul of a newly departed person has begun a new path, that of the particular judgment and eternal life. The departed go to their previously reposed relatives—to their beloved grandparents, to their dear friends. A meeting full of love and joy awaits them. And we weep for ourselves. It’s me who won’t see my reposed loved one for a long time; it’s me who will miss him here on earth. By crying I actually pity myself. For non-believers this is really a tragedy and a nightmare, because they do not believe in the afterlife, and for them death is the end. But God promised us that we will all see each other again there and spend eternity together. We are not separated forever.” (Priest Alexei Taakh)

“Peter is so overcome with fear that neither Christ's prediction (Luke 22:34) nor the crowing of the rooster calls him to repentance, but only the Lord's gaze causes him to weep bitterly …When Peter went out and wept bitterly it shows he really did not want to fail here and was deeply grieved that he had…Nevertheless, “through tears, what cannot be defended can be purged, for tears wash away the offense which is shameful to confess out loud.” (Orthodox Study Bible, Luke 22:6-12, NET Bible, Luke 22:62, St. Ambrose of Milan)

“ Peter . . . wept so that he could purge his sin with tears. If you want to deserve pardon, you should wash away your guilt with tears. At that same moment and time, Christ looks at you. If you perhaps fall into some sin, because he is a witness to your secrets, He looks at you so that you may recall and confess your error.” (St. Ambrose)

“To wash away the sin of denial, Peter needed the baptism of tears. From where would he get this, unless the Lord gave him this too? That is why the apostle Paul gave this advice to his people concerning deviant opinions and about how they should deal with them. He said they must be “correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth” [2Tm 2:25]. So even repentance is a gift from God. The heart of the proud is hard ground. It is softened for repentance only if it is rained on by God’s grace.” (St. Augustine)

“Tears cleanse and heal the soul. But we should be careful lest the devil drowns us in our sorrow. We should trust that the Lord embraces us in our grief over sin.tears should be ones of joy more than sorrow. Why? Because if we weep only because we have sinned, we have not yet entered into God’s salvation. When we agree to be disciples of Jesus, to be united to Christ, then we experience forgiveness and our tears are turned to joy as we realize the absolutely amazing love and grace of our God for us sinners. And when we acknowledge we have been forgiven, our next response should be a willingness to forgive those who have offended us.” (Fr. Basil, Fr. Ted Bobosh)

“Tears and compunction, then, are caused not just by a realization of our own sinfulness, but also and much more fundamentally by a grateful and tender recognition of God’s forgiving love…God is visiting you when tears come during prayer.” (Nikitas Stithatos, Elder Amphilochios Makris of Patmos)

“…as long as distress and anguish stay cramped and compressed in our hearts, they darken our thinking. When they are emptied and evaporate through the words of our supplication and the tears which flow from our eyes as we pray, they bring a great brightness to the soul. Why? Because, like the rays of the sun, God’s help has entered into the soul of the person who is praying.” (St. John Chrysostom)

“To be much for God, we must be much with God. Jesus, that lone figure in the wilderness, knew strong crying, along with tears. Can one be moved with compassion and not know tears? Jeremiah was a sobbing saint. Jesus wept! So did Paul. So did John.” (Billy Graham)

“Sometimes a person prays with his tears, even when words are missing…Your silent prayers uttered on tearstained pillows were heard before they were said.” (Bill Gothard Max Lucado)

“Contrition and compunction are its regular companions. Compunctious prayer is based on an attentive life attentive to the ever-presence of God in our life, to the purity of our heart, to the genuine humility of our spirit, and to the mystery of death which we must ever remember and contemplate…It is important to distinguish true compunction from the tears of superficiality, vanity and sentimentality.” (Monk Moses)

“When I went to my first confession,” a friend told me, “tears took the place of the sins I meant to utter. The priest simply told me that it wasn’t necessary to enumerate everything and that it was just vanity to suppose that our personal sins are worse than everyone else’s. Which, by the way, was something of a relief, since it wasn’t possible for me to remember all the sins of my first thirty-odd years of life. It made me think of the way the father received his prodigal son—he didn’t even let his son finish his carefully rehearsed speech. It’s truly amazing.” (Jim Forest)

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