Surcease of Sorrow

Irish Jesuit Province

Surcease of SorrowAuthor(s): William A. SuttonSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 28, No. 322 (Apr., 1900), pp. 178-181Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20499580 .

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( 178 )

SURCEASE OF SORROW.

GRIEF, no matter how bitter it is, no matter how raging its pain, infallibly subsides with time. Every day, every

hour that passes, tends to mitigate and soften its soreness and heal its angry wounds. Before very long it exists only in memory, and we find ourselves baok agairL in our normal state. This is espeoially true of sorrow caused by death, separation, disappointed ambition, misplaoed confidenoe, friendship, affeotion of any kind. But indeed we get acoustomed in time to almost anything, we beoome reconciled to what must be endured, we adapt ourselves to our inner and outer state, more or less siuccess fully. And in all this the mere factor of time is perhaps the most effiaoious healer of our wounded hearts, though of oourse there are other powerful ingredients in the remedies to be ministered to

minds and hearts diseased with sorrow. What happens in the case of the deep interest, poignant grief

and pity excited by creations of fiction, men and women who have no real existence, but whose intensely human careers, pathetic struggles, disasters and tragic fate haunt and pain us for days and weeks, happens also in the real sorrows of life. This is worth insisting on at some little length. After reading some powerful

work of fiotion in which the pathos and tragedy of human life is put before us in " thoughts that breathe and words that burn," we find our minds and hearts filled with ideas and emotions often of a most mournful and pieroing kind. We oatoh ourselves oonstantly recurring to the harrowing events whioh cause I our tears to flow and saying to ourselves, " Oh, the pity of it, the pity of it !" These wondrous produots of another's imagination become for a time as if they were part and parcel of ourselves, our own kith and kin. There is nothing more strange than this psyehologioal phenomenon. It is merely mentioned here as an example of the gradual diminution and final disappearance of grief by the mere process of the passage of time. Sir George Tressady, Laura Fountain, Kitty Iomayne, Tom and Maggie Tulliver, Nanno Breen, and all the other pathetic and tragic charaoters of fiction, after affecting us so deeply for a time, interfere after that interval extremely little, if at all, with our every-day life, which then runs



Surease of Sorrow. 179

OD as it did before it was disturbed and enriohed by their touohing

stories. Our own real sorrows undoubtedly take longer to subside

very often, but their process of healing is ouriously similar and

equally sure. It is worth mentioning and insisting on that a

great work of fiotion, or any well-written book of the kind, is a most effioaoious anodyne in sorrow, when our ciroumstances

permit us to make use of it. It is at times perfeotly legitimate to have recourse to anything that will take our minds off from brooding over our griefs, while remembering that we must work and pray too, the great speoifics for alleviating sorrow.

At different periods of life people suffer differently under its afflictions. The young are more acutely affeoted, but recover

more quickly; the middle-aged feel deeply no doubt but experience prevents them being so shooked as the young are, while their

reoovery is less rapid; the old do not seem to suffer so intensely

as those who are still full of the vigour and energy of life.

When shocking experiences of any kind come upon the yoang, it seems to them that all the joy and charm of life are

over for ever. Everything looks blaok, they' feel as if they never could hope again; but very soon all that passes away and we see them after a while as brisk and gay and hopeful as ever. One of the kind of things that used to impress me in this way waas long ago when living by the sea, if drowning accidents ocourred, and when the bodies were brought ashore and lay on the beaoh or elsewhere awaiting the inquest. Sadness and horror overwhelmed

me, and I used to think I never could be again as I used to be. It never took long to get over. " Men are but children of a larger growth," and consequently a good deal of what ohildren

manifest in sorrow, reveals itself in their elders also. A curious example of this is how we are inclined to think when fresh sorrow comes upon us that we shall never get over it, and this repeats itself over and over again, notwithstanding all our experienoe of the passing of sorrow by the passing of time.

We must all have felt several times over in our lives, when some great sorrow oame, that we at length realized how all things

were vanity, and that we were fools for loving the world and its delusive hopes and promises. Just as often we have experienoed that in no long time we looked on life again the same way as before and felt just as much at home in the world and with its

ways, and as desirous of continuing in it and enjoying what it



180 The Irah Monthly.

has to give, as if we had never got the insight into its hollowness, which the wisdom taught by sorrow gives. Oh, we are strange, inconstant and most inconsistent beings, and the world and all its

ways and everything that makes up reality are full of wonder and mystery.

One of the most wonderful things in human nature is that, in spite of all the horrors and shocking miseries we are surrounded

with, we are constantly acting and thinking as if oomparative trifles were of the greatest importance, while forgetting or deliberately ignoring matters of supreme concern to us. Most of this must be

so, and we are not in the least morally culpable because we laugh

and trifle and worry about little or nothing, when, if we were logioal, we should be seriously intent on quite different things.

But that we must laugh and often trifle in the midst of human

circumstances snch as they are, that is what is amazing and

mysterious. " Laughter shall be in the midst of sorrow," Solomon says, and in saying so he describes human life. That all

things are wonderful and mysterious and that we ourselves are

a mass of inconsistencies and incongruities is in the nature of

things; one way or another it must be so and cannot be other

wise, and the consideration of it removes many importunate diffioulties regarding life and conduct, reason and faith.

We have good reason, then, for being inconsistent, though that will not always excuse us for being so. I-lowever, ordinary incon sistencies are not only exousable but perfectly natural. Thus

laughing in the midst of sorrow and fretting about trivial things, when one's heart is breaking with terrible grief, is most inconsistent but most natural and a meroiful provision for the relief of

mourning and woe. It is quite oommon for people to laugh and

joke and fret about things of no importance, notwithstanding

that the light and joy of their lives is for a time darkened and

deadened by grief. 1 knew a person whose whole life was a

prolonged tragedy, whose family history was full of the saddest events, and who, when there was no silver lining to the black

cloud all round, would not leave London for a more suitable place because some of its sights had not been visited. I have

often sat with people in the midst of awful sorrow, and I have

seen them laugh, not once but several times, notwithstanding their miseries and bereavements. It is good to make the sorrowful smile and laugh, it is good to get their thoughts away from their



Surcease of Sorrow. 181

griefs for a while, but it should be done while full of sympathy with them, while letting them feel we realise their woe. One of the most terribly bereaved persons I ever met, whose agonising

grief was fearful to witness, told me that she had been visited by a clergyman, whose whole talk was about himself and his

prospects and of promoting the advancement of relations of his. There are all kinds of queernesses in human characters; crass selfishness is a most unpleasant type, but very interesting too, as illustrating marvellous incongruity between consciousness and environiment.

Wonder is exoited by effects whose causes are hidden from us. When we get to know these causes, we cease to wonder, but we may still be full of admiration, which is a higher kind of wonder. The explanation of our inconsistenoies would be the explanation of our rational and emotional nature, of our mind and senses and desires; how we have an intellect that surveys all things finite and infinite, temporal and eternal; how we have a will which longs for all good things of whatever kind, but whioh nothing but infinite good can fully satisfy, and which, left to itself, is more fickle than a weathercook, owing to the conflicting tendencies of reason and passion. Grand indeed and majestic is human nature, if we consider its faculties and capacities, but wretohed and degraded when these faculties are allowed to " prey on garbage." Very often peace and plenty, absenoe of oare and sorrow, have a terrible effect on human beings. They become insensible to the claims of their spiritual bei ig and care only for the things of this world. They forget God and so become proud and wicked and that in a fearful degree, so that whatever their eyes desire they refuse them not. Bitter grief, piercing sorrow opens our eyes to the nature of this life. " What does he know,

who has not been tried ?" the Wise Man asks, as if freedom from

suffering necessitated a man's being foolish. It is true that grief at times is so terrible that we should despair and blaspheme if we

did not have recourse to God by prayer. He alone can adequately

help and console us in terrible sorrow, and He alone ean enable

us to understand and make rigbt use of all kinds of afflictions.

It is worth onduring such to learn the reality of things; otherwise few would ever understand why we are in the world, and all

its uses would become " weary, flat, stale and unprofitable " instead of preparing and fitting us for the state and life of immortality. WILrLAM A. SUTTON, 5.J.



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Surcease of Sorrow