Can Grief Be Our Bridge to Heaven?

One of my worst fears is that of losing my loved ones. How do I bear the loneliness of not being able to see them again?

My mind just cannot reconcile the idea of suddenly losing the presence of someone very close to you. How could everything just end in death? Why must death swallow up everything that is good and beautiful that we have found in life?

The Reality of Grief

The reality, however, is that I would one day face my most dreaded fear. If not me, my loved ones would.

Joy would turn into sorrow. Laughter would yield to tears. And grief would take the place of the presence of the person who passes away.

Grief is inevitable. It happens to everyone whether rich or poor. We all lose someone close to our hearts.

Why Does God Allow Grief?

Have you ever wondered why God allows His children to grieve? Since Jesus Christ has already conquered death, why must we still face its bitterness?

Perhaps this is the same question Martha and Mary asked when Jesus failed to arrive on time to heal their beloved brother Lazarus.

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” Martha and Mary said to Jesus when He finally came.

They believed with all of their hearts that He could save their beloved brother. So why didn’t He? Why did He come too late?

The Pain of Death

“When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’” – John 11:33-36 (NRSVCE)

Jesus Himself wept. He knew He could raise up Lazarus from the dead, but when He saw His friends and the other people weeping, he Himself wept.

Jesus understands the pain of losing our loved ones. It is a pain so deep it urges us to ask the most profound questions we could ever have about life and about our faith.

Will the dead really be raised again? Is there truly a heaven where our griefs could finally be taken away?

How Grief Tests Our Faith

Grief takes us to the reality of life. I takes away someone so important to us that we can’t even begin to understand why such a tragedy ever had to happen at all.

It then allows us to think about the things that truly matter to us. It checks the way we see the world in the light of love and eternity.

If we haven’t taken our faith seriously before, should it be time to deepen it more? If we haven’t prayed as frequently, is our grief urging us to pray so that we can somehow connect with our loved ones again?

It is natural for people, even those who don’t formally profess belief in God to talk to their deceased loved ones as though they could still hear them.

Perhaps that’s the way the human soul recognizes the truth about the immortality of the soul.

We don’t just die and suddenly cease to exist. In a way unknown to us, we carry on. Our loved ones carry on in the life after this one.

Our Bridge to Eternal Life

The grief of losing our loved ones could very well be the messenger of eternal life. Through the incomparable pain we experience after their death, we are asked, “Where is your hope?”

Is our life based only upon our fleeting physical existence? Are we looking forward to the life after this one where we can finally see God face-to-face?

Grief tells us that love seeks to endure beyond time and space. Even after the death of our loved ones, we still long to talk to them, to connect with them and to believe that they can still be with us.

If we truly believe in our Christian faith, we put our trust in Jesus Christ who has conquered death for us. Jesus allowed Martha and Mary to experience the pain of losing Lazarus to bring them to a greater realization of His power. And His power does not end in raising Lazarus back to his temporary earthly life. That power will be fully manifest on the last day when death shall be no more.

“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” – John 11:25-26 (NRSVCE)

“The grave itself is but a covered bridge, Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness!”– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Jocelyn Soriano writes about relationships and the Catholic faith at Single Catholic Writer. She wrote the books In Your Hour of Grief and Of Waves and Butterflies: Poems on Grief.