May the perpetual light shine.

In this age of self-help, what do you do when you reach the limits of the help you can give yourself?

CATHOLICISM TAKES A LOT OF LUMPS FROM CRITICS, both inside and outside its ranks. Sometimes the criticism is warranted, sometimes not. Most of these criticisms are about matters of church practice or policy. But matters at the very heart of our faith tend to silence outsiders and unite insiders. These central truths have more to do with essential mysteries of our existence, our purpose, our destiny as children of God. It's when the church is dealing with these issues at the pastoral and personal level that Catholicism shines at its very best.

And so it was when some dear friends lost their son to suicide. When there were no words we could muster, nor analysis that could prove fruitful, we stood mute before the deepest mysteries of our existence. And as has happened for centuries, we turned to the rites and rituals, the songs and stories of our faith. And our faith carried us through the valley of darkness, our agony in the garden.

My friend Bob, who was facing the most painful moment of his life, said, "Without the blessings of our faith, and the sacramental nature of our marriage, I don't know how we could carry on." Thankfully, our faith doesn't leave us without resources in our grieving.

I once read a comment about funeral Masses that has stayed with me. The writer reflected how helpful it was, while he was in the midst of mourning, to have a community of believers around him, saying the prayers he was unable to pray, singing the songs he could not lift a voice to sing. He and his family had been borne along by the faith of the community joining in age-old rites that had power to receive and contain their grief, anger, loss, terror, and despair, and give a foretaste of eternal life in return.

Our storehouse of narratives and symbols and rites does not shy away from grief. Lamentations 3:17 says bluntly: "My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is." Having met us in our pain, the rituals and the stories also convey the content of our faith, Jesus Christ himself. The story of Jesus' suffering, dying, and rising are a guiding pattern for all of creation, and entering into these mysteries--for indeed they are a mystery in every sense of the word to our 21st-century, Western, logical minds--can transform us from lost and confused individuals to members of the Body of Christ. We die with him but also rise with him to everlasting glory. That is our faith, and we get a sense of it when we celebrate Mass, especially the Mass of the Resurrection when we're mindful of our own and our loved ones' mortality.

Wandering through the aisles of a major bookstore recently, I saw rows and rows of self-help books and realized this is the official religion of our age. But what do you do when you reach the limits of the help you can give yourself, when you realize that no help that you can devise of your own resources will ever be enough? When your reality will not be helped by having a positive mental attitude, crystals on your dashboard, or being your own best friend. At such times we turn to the story that leads to the cross and through the tomb. Only then do the promises of resurrection ring true.

My friends included the following poem at the back of their son's funeral Mass leaflet. The imagery draws its power from the central stories of our faith.

   The Homecoming

   The spirit, newly freed from earth,
   is all amazed at the surprise
   of [his] belonging: suddenly
   as native to eternity
   to see [himself], to realize
   the heritage that lets [him] be
   at home where all this glory lies.

   By naught foretold could [he] have guessed
   such welcome home: the robe, the ring,
   music and endless banqueting,
   these people [his]; this place of rest
   known as of long remembering
   [himself] a child of God and pressed
   with warm endearments to His breast.

--Jessica Powers(*)

We have questions that seem to have no answers. But God responds in every age, in every situation. Our church safeguards and delivers that response so that even in our deepest sadness we may yet be blessed indeed.

(*) From The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, published by ICS Publications, Washington, D.C. All copyrights, Carmelite Monastery, Pewaukee, WI. Used with permission.

By TOM MCGRATH, executive editor of U.S. CATHOLIC magazine.