Sometimes We All Need A Good Cry

When’s the last time you had a good cry? There is something healthy about crying I have decided. It’s a cleansing experience. What makes us cry? We cry when we are in pain, physical or emotional. We cry when we are overwhelmed with happiness, and we cry when we are overwhelmed with sorrow.

Some contemporary empirical research would argue that sometimes we cry simply because we need hug. This modern research explains how a part of our humanity is our connection with others, our natural drive for community. Crying is a part of an expression of desire to connect to that community, a need to recharge, which is perhaps why so often our tears tend to slow, if not completely stop, when they are met with an embrace from someone we love.

Today is the Feast of Mary Magdalene. Mary was one of Christ’s followers while He was on this earth. Everyone seems to have their own take on this woman. Some tradition simply speaks of her colorful past from before meeting Jesus, some say she was a prostitute, and a movie produced in the late 90’s claimed she was a source of sexual temptation for Christ even as He hung on the Cross. Whatever her history was, the morning of the Resurrection, we know that she arrived at the tomb with two of the Apostles, and upon discovering that the tomb was empty, the apostles ran to tell the others, while Mary stood and cried. She cried because in that moment all she needed was Jesus. It was bad enough He was dead, so He wouldn’t be able to hear her, comfort her, or advise her as He previously had, but now even His body is gone. All she wanted and needed was a few moments with the only person who ever REALLY knew her. The result; she sees the Risen Jesus, who stands before her and asks why she is “seeking the living among the dead”.

I think we are in many ways a lot like Mary Magdalene. We go through our daily lives doing the best that we can, we are good people who pay our bills, go to work to make an honest days pay, we seek companionship in friends and lovers, we try to save for the future, and strive to reach our goals. In the meanwhile everyone else seems to have their own take on us. People construct their own opinions, and like the historians who wrote extensive pieces justifying their opinions on Mary Magdalene, when our name comes up in others’ conversation people promulgate the opinion they have constructed. History records its own many variations of our story; none of which ever seem to capture the real story of us.

I had the honor of presiding over a funeral yesterday for a man who was with his partner for 33 years. As the new widower stood at the casket of his beloved, he put his hand on the hand of the deceased and as a tear rolled down his cheek he offered a silent goodbye to the person with whom so much had been shared over the course of three decades. I was reminded in that moment of the scene a few days earlier in his Hospice Care Facility, as he who is now deceased lay on his bed, with tubes connected to his nose, breathing his final days breath. His partner held his hand that day too, as he said to me, “Father we had our ups and downs, but we always worked through it. I am just so grateful.”

I know I have those moments, we all have them. We all face those moments where for whatever reason, and in response to sometimes unknown stimulus, we get that feeling inside of us that says, “no one understands me.” We have moments where we feel so upset, and if only someone could live inside of our heads for just a minute, and feel what we feel, and look at life through our eyes they would completely understand our pain – but when asked to put it into words we can’t, or when we try, it doesn’t communicate to the person who is listening. That’s because often life’s burden is so personal, that if given the opportunity to allow someone else to help us carry it, we wouldn’t even know how to distribute the weight to those who were willing to help. There is no sense in trying, because each of our individual crosses is fashioned for no other shoulder but our own.

The lesson of Mary Magdalene is that there are going to be times that we run to the tomb and find it empty. There are going to be those moments when we are going to turn to that which strengthens us and be unable to find it, for the Christian that strength is Jesus Christ, and there will be times where even He will be seemingly absent. In Mary’s case the Risen Christ was hidden in the form of who she thought was the groundskeeper. Where is Christ hidden waiting for us? I can’t answer that question, for each of us it is different. What I do know is that for Mary step one was a good cry, then she was able to recognize the Risen Lord. So when we feel the tears coming, we need to let them flow. Allow yourself a good cry. Then after it’s over, embrace that feeling of release, that consolation that we find somewhere deep inside of us when its over, that sense of relief as though those tears were each weights that were adding to life’s burden.

Enjoy your next good cry, it’s God’s way of cleansing the heart and soul, so that like Mary, we can see the Risen Christ among us, and hear Him when inquires; “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”