Chine McDonald knows what it’s like to feel world-weary. Just hours before she sat down to write a reflection for CT’s Lent & Easter Special Issue, she’d comforted a friend who was facing enormous grief of losing a child.
“That we live in a world where such a thing can happen is a heartache that looms under the surface for many of us,” writes McDonald. She finds that the German weltschmerz and French mal du siècle describe that heartache better than English can, encapsulating “an epiphany of sorts where we resonate with what philosopher Frederick C. Beiser defines as ‘a mood of weariness or sadness about life arising from the acute awareness of evil and
suffering.’”
As the season of Lent draws near, such a mood is not only understandable but perhaps appropriate. While we are not called to mope our way through the months leading up to Easter, we see in Jesus’s example that there is much more room for our sadness and grief than we may think.
McDonald reflects on the time Jesus spends with Mary and Martha after their brother, Lazarus, has died. Jesus knows that he will resurrect Lazarus and reunite him with his sisters. But instead of rushing to the positive outcome or scoffing at the weeping women, Jesus inhabits their sorrow with them.
“This is a God who weeps—a God who ugly-cries,” writes McDonald. “God is intimately acquainted with the ache of weltschmerz.”
Whether the weeks to come are filled with smiles or sorrow, may we remember that we worship a God who joins us in the emotions that words cannot capture.
