Tears

"I will not say, 'Do not weep,' for not all tears are an evil."

Gandalf says this to the hobbits at the end of Return of the King, as he is departing for the Grey Havens. It gives rise to the question, "In what cases could be tears be an evil?"

Epictetus holds an extreme view of emotions. He instructing his students not to be attached to anything that is outside of their control. When you kiss your wife, he says, remind yourself that she could be taken away at any time. This prevents the student from feeling any sadness. If you are not attached to anything, you won't wish to hold onto it when it is gone. You will never bury a loved one, for the horribly depressing reason that you don't really have any loved ones. His philosophy is one that attempts to separate all things which could potentially cause pain to the person.

This attempt to separate one's soul from one's body and everything around it is impossible. Being creatures whose souls and bodies are parts of a whole and not in conflict, we cannot hold the outside away from us. Pain and pleasure are experiences which are proper to the unitive whole of a human being. Epictetus is wrong, then. Tears cannot always be a bad thing.

But when are they a good thing? St. Augustine holds that crying at the death of someone dear to us is not always proper. He says that we should weep for our loved ones, if we believe death brought them to a place of pain and punishment. If, however, we believe them to be enjoying the bliss of heaven (or even the pains of purgatory), we should rejoice for them and their freedom from this sin-riddled world. Care must be taken, however, not to take the words of this saint to the extreme. St. Augustine himself was quite shaken when both his mother and his best friend died. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus.

What I believe we must take from St. Augustine's teaching is that we must be moderate in our mourning, for it is not sympathy for the other, but it is, rather, selfish. We are weeping for ourselves. Friends are to be enjoyed and loved insofar as they lead us to God. In losing a good friend, we lose one of the gifts that God gave us to use to get to Him. We mourn for ourselves and our loss, and this is right and proper. We should not, however, be carried away by grief to a state of incapacitation. To be debilitated by our tears would be an evil; it would carry us away from God and towards ourselves, contrary to His will for us in providing the dear friend.

Death is an evil, yes. It entered the world as a consequence of sin. Corruption of our bodies is unnatural, and the departing of a fellow human being is a reminder of our fallen state. So you should cry, because it is sad and a real loss.

Not all tears are an evil.


Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei