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t h i r t e e n And Jesus Wept Notes towards a Theology of Mourning Richard Schenk, O.P. IMAGINING THE GOAL OF THE INVESTIGATION To investigate historical texts with systematic intent demands at the start that we develop a rough idea of the goal that might be served by the texts that we plan to examine more closely. In the best case, the sense of where we are headed will make us aware of those texts most relevant to our question. This anticipation of a plausible end is also the condition of the possibility of ever being taught by the texts that an initial aim is untenable; the preconception of a systematic goal is what makes possible its verification or falsification along with the focus on certain texts within the vast forests of traditional writings. It is what will allow those texts to attain, to correct, to complete, or possibly to deny that interpretive desideratum which at first must remain somewhat vague. In imagining at the beginning of our investigation the need for and the character of a theology of mourning, we face the same problem in looking back at Thomas’s writings that he himself faced in looking at the tradition that he had received: the lack of a clear idea in advance as to what a genuinely Christian theology of mourning could and should be. If the thesis of this paper can be sustained, this deficit of today means that the theology of mourning that Thomas had once been working towards has still not yet been adequately identified or received , something that can be remedied in part by greater attention to his Commentary on the Gospel of St. John. What the following investigation seeks can be sketched already by the first of three systematic contexts related to a theology of mourning. The context most imme212 = diate and explicit, for Thomas as well as for us, regards the Christian reaction to the loss of personal loved ones. A certain long-standing and widespread, though unexamined, habit of speaking, especially common at funeral services, implies that Christians should not mourn at all; at best, mourning is to be tolerated as a brief concession to our weak-sighted humanity, a concession directly in tension with our faith, rather than a demand of Christian faith, hope, and love. The sadness about death is said to come from a lack of vision into the reality of what has happened in death to the departed person. This attitude is reflected in part at the end of The Tragedy of King Lear: The weight of this sad time we must obey, Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.1 The final speaker in Lear, Edgar, expresses here a dialectic between “ought” and “ought,” not uncommon in everyday reflections on mourning: the tension between what we assume that we are expected to profess (“what we ought to say”) and a more basic and pressing ought, the feelings whose need for expression we also “must obey,” although they are thought to conflict with more social or ecclesial expectations. This dialectic is at least as old as Augustine’s Confessions (dated to ca. –). Augustine’s description of his own and his son’s mourning at the death of Monica2 displays one of the most insightful and detailed ancient phenomenologies of mourning. Augustine notes the waves of mourning, unimpressed by most of the therapies that would later be listed by Thomas Aquinas in the Summa theologiae as “remedies” for sadness,3 and punctuated all too shortly by sleep.4 Augustine mentions the solace provided the mourner by his continued concern for the well-being of the soul of the deceased;5 the contribution of mourning towards slowing the final disappearance of the dead from our lives and towards that intertwining of concern for the deceased with a sense of one’s own loss, revealing the irreplaceable uniqueness of and our need for the deceased in the very moment of their loss to our own And Jesus Wept  1. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of King Lear, ., in W. Shakespeare, The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1), . 2. St. Augustine, Confessionum Libri XIII, lib. IX, cap. 12 (2) CChrL XXVII (Turnholt: Brepols , 10), lib. IX, cap. 11–1. . Compare Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II, q. , a. , on baths and sleep, with St. Augustine, Confessionum, 11f., ll. 0–0; on tears...

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