In the measure in which a Christian lives by his ties with the supernatural, he will sorrow, above all, over the sorrows of Christ. The words: “My heart hath expected reproach and misery: and I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none” (Ps. 68:20b), will pierce his heart. With the blessed Jacopone da Todi he will exclaim: “Mother, fount of love the purest, make me feel all the anguish thou endurest, to mourn with thee” (Stabat Mater).

However felicitous one may be in one’s personal life, this pain must never be allowed to die away. How could we forget—though the joys we experience be ever so genuine and ever so great—the suffering of the “Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world”: the suffering which has redeemed us and is the key of our eternal happiness? Far from it. He who is wounded by the love of Christ will pray: “Let me be wounded by his wounds, let me become inebriated with the cross and the blood of Thy Son.” It is, in the first place, “they that mourn” for this cause whom the Lord means when He says, “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”

We should mourn because of the sufferings of mankind in this world

But His word also refers to those who cannot pass by with indifference the ocean of suffering that fills the world. A man so absorbed by his personal happiness as to remain completely untouched by the multifarious suffering that surrounds him is evidently shallow and heartless. From the life of a true Christian—regardless of his personal lot—this sharing of the world’s burden of suffering cannot be absent.

At every moment an infinity of heart-rending things happen in the world. The fact that this earth is a valley of tears never remains hidden even in anyone’s immediate environment, unless his eyes are blinded. To everyone who loves, and in the measure in which his love is a living one, the words of St. Paul apply: “Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I am not on fire?” (2 Cor. 11:29).

Blessed are those who suffer from the disharmony of the world; who from charity help the rest carry their heavy burden; whom the accident of their good fortune does not prevent from being aware of the nature of a fallen world. These—the yearning, the waking, the loving ones—will be comforted in eternity, where “God shall wipe away all tears.”

We are all called to take up our cross