Tears and Love

The world without tears is a heartless world. The soul that sheds no tears is a soul without love. What bigger catastrophe does humanity need for self-destruction?

…Tears are signs of life; they bring life back to the world. Tears well out of the heart of love; they restore to the human community the ability to love. Tears take form in cries and struggles for justice; they revive the soul of our century for a promise and a future. And it is in the people capable of tears that a promise of human community and a future for the world lie.

That is why people must not run out of tears. We must resist turning into statues of tearlessness at all cost. We must continue to be able to shed tears no matter what happens. We must save our tears and have them in plenty. We must have tears for public prayer meetings where we can pray in tears for political prisoners. There will be many occasions for us to mourn, with tears in our eyes, for injustice done to helpless people. In many of the societies to which we belong, it is time for public mourning…

Our Jesus is a man of tears. He must have wept a lot. When he heard that Lazarus had died and been removed to a tomb, he wept (John 11:35). It is human to weep. And if we believe that Jesus is God incarnate, then it is also divine to weep. Those who saw Jesus weep for Lazarus said: “How dearly he must have loved him!” (John 11:36). Tears mean the capacity for love. Those who have no capacity for love have no tears. It is only when you love deeply, only if you love dearly, that you can weep. A stone has no capacity for love: it cannot weep…Tears are signs of humanity and divinity. Through our tears we may still keep this world human and divine.

(from Tears of Lady Meng by C.S.Song, Orbis Books, 1981, pp.40-41)