For the mother who grieves

IYou stand beside a Mother who knows

The Church does not hand a grieving mother a theory. She hands her a person: Our Lady of Sorrows. Simeon foretold it to her: “thy own soul a sword shall pierce” (Luke 2:35). She searched three days for her lost Son: “thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing” (Luke 2:48). And when He died, “there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother” (John 19:25, Douay-Rheims). She is not a distant queen on this page. She is the woman in the room who has done what you are doing.

The tradition counts her Seven Sorrows:

• The prophecy of Simeon
• The flight into Egypt
• The loss of the Child Jesus in Jerusalem
• Meeting Jesus on the way to Calvary
• Standing at the foot of the Cross
• Jesus taken down from the Cross
• The burial of Christ

Her feast is September 15. When no prayer seems possible, begin with a single Hail Mary, said to the Mother who buried her Son.

IIWhat the Church teaches about your child

Mothers have been told careless and false things here, so we will be exact.

If your little one was baptized and died before the age of reason. The Church has long buried such children in white, with psalms of joy, and the old Roman Ritual’s prayer at their burial says plainly what she believes:

If your child was older, past the age of reason, a teenager or a grown son or daughter, the Church commends your child to God’s mercy and prays for them, as she prays for all her dead, above all in the Mass (CCC 1032). She asks you to pray too, and to have Masses offered. If your child died by suicide, she teaches that we must not give up hope for their salvation: God can reach a soul by paths only He knows, and the Church keeps praying for them (CCC 2283).

If your child died before Baptism, in miscarriage, in stillbirth, or too soon, hear the Church’s own words. The Catechism says that for such children the Church “can only entrust them to the mercy of God,” and she does so in the funeral rites she provides for them. God’s great mercy, for He desires all to be saved, and Christ’s tenderness toward children (“Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God,” Mark 10:14, Douay-Rheims) “allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism” (CCC 1261).

In 2007 the International Theological Commission studied the question at length. It concluded that there are “serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptised infants who die will be saved and enjoy the Beatific Vision,” and it was careful to add that these are “reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge.” The Church does not claim a certainty she has not been given. She hopes, she teaches you to hope, and she asks you to entrust your child to God. Entrusting is something a mother knows how to do.

Your motherhood remains. Since the earliest days the Church has kept her dead in reverent memory and prayed for them (CCC 958), and for children who died without Baptism her liturgy asks us to lean on God’s mercy and pray that they be saved (CCC 1283). You can love your child now: by prayer, by having a Mass offered, by keeping the name. You are still, and always, that child’s mother.

If your loss came through abortion, you are still a mother, and the Church has a ministry for exactly you. God’s mercy reaches here too: there is forgiveness, and a way home through the sacrament of Reconciliation. Project Rachel, the Catholic Church’s ministry in the United States to those who have been involved in abortion, offers confidential, non-judgmental help, open to people of every faith or none. On the “Find Help” map at HopeAfterAbortion.com, choose your state to find the ministry in your diocese.

IIIWhat helps, concretely

• Name the child, if you have not, including a child lost early in pregnancy. Named grief has an address. Write the name in your Bible; say it on the anniversary.
• Ask your parish about a funeral and burial. The Church’s law lets the local ordinary (the bishop of the diocese, or his vicar) permit a funeral for a child who died before Baptism whose parents intended to have the child baptized (Code of Canon Law, can. 1183 §2). Your parish priest can ask for you.
• Have a Mass offered, for your child and for your family, and go. There is no closer place to stand.
• Keep the anniversary and the due date as real days: a candle, a visit, the child’s name said at grace.
• Pray small. Grief wrecks concentration, and that is not spiritual failure. One Memorare. One “My Jesus, mercy!” Prayer is fidelity, not mood. The Novena Companion is there when nine days becomes possible.
• If you are married, let your husband grieve differently without reading it as not grieving. Sorrow speaks in dialects. Guard the marriage inside the grief.
• Let people help. Receiving help is not weakness; it gives the people who love you a way to say what words cannot.
• If guilt has attached itself to your grief, take it to a good confessor or spiritual director. Grief often drags guilt behind it, much of it false, and it loosens best in the light.

IVYou do not have to carry this alone

Grief this heavy is not meant to be carried in private. Tell your parish priest plainly: “I lost a child, and I need help carrying it.” Ask whether your parish or diocese has a ministry for bereaved parents. A good counsellor is a gift of God as well; this page is pastoral, not clinical. If you are pregnant or have recently had a baby, the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline offers emotional support and referrals from professional counsellors: call or text 1-833-852-6262, free, confidential, 24/7. It is a support line, not an emergency line.

And a word said with love: grief can grow so heavy that a mother begins to think of not going on. If the weight ever turns to thoughts of harming yourself, treat it as the emergency it is, as real as bleeding. In the United States:

• Call or text 988, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: free, confidential, 24/7.
• If you are in immediate danger, call 911.

Then tell someone who loves you. Your child, in God’s hands, is not honoured by losing you too.

VA prayer for the mother who grieves

Written for this library, for you.

Its last lines lean on the promise of the Apocalypse: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away” (Apocalypse 21:4 [Revelation 21:4], Douay-Rheims).