The Holidays are a depressing season.
We all want to focus on Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You”, eggnog, and Hallmark Christmas specials.
However, behind it all we can’t help but be reminded of the loved ones we’ve lost and can’t share this special time with. For many of us, this grief completely overshadows the holiday experience.
There is no easy way to work through grief. Our Faith, however, gives some particularly powerful ways to manage it.
They are:
Keeping perspective
Prayer
Communion at mass
First, keep perspective with the equation of eternal life:
The promise of eternal life = more life = temporary separation
At the onset of this holiday season, the church in her wisdom, celebrates the promise of eternal life with the Solemnity of All Saints Day. This feast is then followed the very next day with the feast of All Souls to remember and pray for those who are still journeying in purgatory.
We can recognize in these celebrations that our separation from those we love is only temporary; even brief in the context of being together for all eternity.
Second, prayer and meditation is a critical part of staying mentally healthy during the season.
Meditation is widely recognized as one of the most (if not the most) beneficial thing we can do for our mental well-being. In this case, meditation helps us deal with pain.
All forms of meditation are an echo of the power of prayer. As Catholics, we can take meditation and raise its impact through elevating it in our prayer tradition. When we pray, in particular for those we have lost, we tap into the power of meditation and the Holy Spirit to move us through our pain and grief.
Third, mass as communion outside of time
Time travel as we think about it may be for the world of Marty and Doc Brown in Back to the Future. However, the mass transcends time in its own way. When we participate in mass, we are in communion with all souls participating around the world and all souls in heaven.
The beauty of this belief is that when we are present at Mass we are spiritually in the company of our loved ones in a most profound and real way.
Our senses can’t perceive them, just like they can’t perceive Jesus truly present in the Eucharist, but our loved ones are fully present. There is no better place to spend our time of grief than being present with them in this spiritual space that goes beyond the limits of time.
Our faith is profound in the way it can aid our mental health. While these ideas are not a psychological treatment for grief, they can still help transform the pain we feel into something meaningful. These tools can help us to live more fully as God intended, and to develop a deep awareness of His presence in eternity.