Writing for November by Andrew Hamilton SJ “For anyone who has lost a child.”

Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ is consulting editor of Eureka Street and editorial consultant at Jesuit Communications.

Pope Francis’ prayer intention for November:  For anyone who has lost a child
We pray that all parents who mourn the loss of a son or daughter find support in their community and receive peace and consolation from the Holy Spirit.

The saddest funerals of all are those of children. They had so many possibilities which were never realised. The great love and hopes that their parents may have had for them have, it seems, come to nothing.  The intensity of their grief sometimes tears families apart. Nor do we feel grief only at the death of young children. Parents will mourn deeply the death of children of any age. It seems unnatural and hard that our children should die before us.

If we allow the news of wars and disasters today to touch us, we shall have felt for the children who have died violently, often without parents to mourn them.  We may call to mind the children who have been killed by bombs and bullets in Gaza and Lebanon, in Myanmar and Sudan, the children who have died of famine, often having lost or being separated from their parents. In Australia, we think of the children who have died of drug overdoses and who have taken their own lives in prisons or at home. We may be touched by the flood of grief that soaks into our world, and especially by the grief of parents for their children who never deserved to die.

Pope Francis reminds us of how important it is for us to support people whose children have died. It is easy to distance ourselves from their grief by imagining that parents who have many children will not grieve the loss of one child as much as will the parents of smaller families. Or by imagining that people in less expressive cultures, or parents of children who have lost their way and died on the streets, do not feel grief as much as us. That is untrue. Grief at loss is universal.  People who grieve need our care and our time.

Pope Francis insists that we need communities which will support us in grieving the death of those whom we love. People who are separated from their communities or live in an environment in which people do not know nor reach out to one another find it difficult to cope with grief. Our church can be very important in times of grief. We can gather around people who lose children, help them take care of the tasks that need to be done, and keep visiting and keeping in touch with them after the death. In the Gospels, Jesus often encounters people who are seriously ill and who have lost relatives. He shares their grief and helps in its healing. His is the face that a caring church will show.

Pope Francis prays that the Holy Spirit will console people after the death of the children. The Holy Spirit acts both imperceptibly and unexpectedly, often through our faith that those who have died will rise to life with Jesus and our hope that we shall be reunited in heaven. The Christian community can support one another with this hope. Although it does not lessen our grief at the death of a child, it can help us to bear it. And the Spirit can often supply for the words we cannot find as we accompany people in their grief.