"This touches all families”; "it is part of life," but "when it touches family affections, it never really seems natural to us." At yesterday's General Audience, Pope Francis spoke about death and mourning. "For parents, outliving their children is something particularly painful, in contradiction with the fundamental nature of the relationships that give meaning to the family. When a son or a daughter is lost, it is as if time had stopped: a chasm opens up and swallows both the past and the future." It "sweeps away—Francis continued—all the promises, gifts and sacrifices joyfully made out of love for life the life to which we gave birth. Often, parents come to Mass in Santa Marta with a picture of a son, a daughter, a baby, a boy, a girl, and say to me: 'He or she is gone.' The pain is visible in their eyes. Death affects us, and even more deeply when a child dies."
In the same way, the Pope said, "even a young child suffers, when he/she remains alone after having lost one parent or both. […] The void of abandonment that opens within a child is all the more distressing because he/she has not yet experienced enough to be able to 'put a name' on what has happened," on that "black hole" that "opens in the lives of families and for which we cannot give any explanation." Sometimes, says the Pope, people "even blame God." Yet, there is not only physical death. It has some "accomplices" who "are even worse, and that are called hate, envy, pride, greed;" they make it "even more painful and unjust," because the "family ties appear as the predestined, helpless victims of these auxiliary powers of death, that accompany humanity's history."
In any case, "death does not have the last word." Every time "a family is in mourning—even if this is terrible—, it finds the strength to keep the faith and love that unite us to those we love, it prevents death from taking everything right then. The darkness of death must be faced by living even more intensely." Without refusing the tears: "Even Jesus 'wept' and was 'deeply disturbed' by the grief of a family he loved. We can learn—he concluded—from the simple and strong testimony of many families who have been able to perceive, in the tough transition of death, the certain passage of the Lord, with His irrevocable promise of the resurrection of the dead."
