Question
Dear Father Angelo,
I happened to read on the Internet about the gift of tears. Can you explain to me what it is exactly and under what circumstances it occurs?
Sincerely,
Giorgia
A priest answer
Dear Giorgia,
1. According to the spiritual authors the gift of tears corresponds to the second evangelical beatitude which sounds like this: Blessed are those who weep, for they will be comforted (Mt 5: 4).St. Thomas says that these tears are of mourning. It is true because to cry in Latin is “flere”.
While the evangelical beatitude concerns the” lugére”: Blessed “qui lugent”, that is, blessed are those who cry for mourning.
St. Thomas explains: “If we weep those who died physically, all the more we weep those who died spiritually” (Cf. Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew 5,4).
It is therefore a question of tears over sins and spiritual death.
2. These tears are not always necessarily proper tears.
We read of the blessed Bertrando di Garrigue who was St. Dominic’s companion in travels, holiness and fervor who used to constantly cry over his sins.
At a certain point St. Dominic told him not to moan for his own sins anymore, because he had already atoned for them enough, but for those of others.
Well, about this weeping, one doesn’t necessarily have to think that he always had tears in his eyes.
3. More likely it is a way of saying and that makes us understand what Blessed Jordan of Saxony wrote about him: He was a man of great holiness and inexorable rigor towards himself, very severe as he was in mortifying his own flesh and in imitating in many things, as a model and example, the Master Domenico with whom he had sometimes been a travelling companion “( Libellus de initiis Ordinis fratrum Praedicatorum, n.51).
4. Therefore, the gift of tears consists in weeping and mortifying one’s own flesh in atonement for sins.
And that is so true that even in the Dominican Liturgy, which also has a votive Mass to obtain the gift of tears, in the collect we pray as follows: “Almighty and ever mild God, who caused a source of living water to flow from the rock for the thirsty people, draw tears of compunction from the hardness of our heart so that we can weep for our sins and we deserve for your mercy to obtain forgiveness ”.
5. We forget ever too quickly that also the contrition for our sins is of supernatural nature.
It is beyond our capabilities, it is a grace and a gift from God.
We can’t get it ourselves
So it must be invoked, welcomed and held back not with empty sighs, but through a penitent life, like Blessed Bertrando did.
6. I also like to reflect on what the Holy Father Dominic told him when he asked him to mourn the sins of others.
In short, he asked him to ask God for the grace to be sorry for the sins of men.
That is indeed to have a little of the same sorrow that Jesus had when,after seeing our sins, he voluntarily offered himself to his passion.
7. These are the tears that Saint Catherine of Siena describes in her Dialogue when she hears the Eternal Father say: “The soul no longer thinks of itself but only of giving glory and praise to the name of God.
With a nagging desire she delights in taking nourishment on the table of the most holy Cross, that is to conform to the patient and immaculate Lamb, the only begotten Son, of whom God made the Bridge between earth and heaven … true and sweet acceptance of every effort and every pain, as allowed by the Father.
She virally suffers everything, without making choices that are personal but according to the divine will.
And she not only suffers with patience but even with joy.
And likewise, this class of souls considers it a glory to be persecuted for the name of God, even at the cost of great suffering. They experience such delight and tranquility of spirit that there is no language in the world capable of describing this “(Dialogue, 88-89).
As we can see, they are not material tears or sensitive emotions, but the desire to be perfectly conformed to Christ on the cross in order to gain souls.
8. But then there is also another type of tears that only some come to experience and are intimately linked to an intimate union with God.
They are tears of sweetness.
Saint Catherine hears herself saying (because it is the Eternal Father who speaks): “These tears are like a fragrant ointment that spreads around itself a perfume of great sweetness.
How glorious is the soul that has been able to pass from the stormy sea to my shore, to the Pacific Sea, filling the vessel of its heart with this water, of me eternal deity!
Therefore the eyes, which are like a channel, try to satisfy the heart by shedding tears of love. This is the last stage in which the soul finds itself blissful and still in some way pained.
Blessed for the union achieved and to taste the divine presence, but at the same time sorrowful for the offenses she sees done against my great goodness, and she tastes them in the knowledge she has obtained of herself, through which she has been able to reach the last degree of perfection ”(Dialogue, 89).
9. Personally, I was lucky enough to meet people who felt their hearts melt with sweetness and gratitude for having obtained the grace of being able to say an Our Father and a Hail Mary.
They felt it was an inexpressibly great grace to be allowed to pray with the Jesus prayer, to pray in Jesus, to pray with Jesus.
And they also felt that it was an inexpressibly great grace to be able to greet Our Lady as she was greeted by Heaven through St. Gabriel and as Elizabeth greeted her, filled with the Holy Spirit.
To us what I’m writing seems to be just words.
For them, however, it is like going from the greatest misery which is that of a sinful man to the very high honor of being able to praise God with the very words given to us by Heaven.
I sincerely wish the same sort of experience to you and me and also to all our visitors.
In the meanwhile I wish you fruitful lent, I entrust you to God and I bless you
Father Angelo
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