The death of someone we love is always painful. To love is to carry another within us, to keep a special place in our heart for him or her.

The death of someone we love is always painful. To love is to carry another within us, to keep a special place in our heart for him or her. This spiritual space is nourished by a physical presence; death, then, tears out a part of our own heart and puts us in the place of loneliness. Those who deny the suffering of death have never truly loved; they live in a spiritual illusion. To celebrate death, then, is not to deny the pain and the grief it involves; it is to give space to live it, to speak about it, and even to sing of it. It is to give mutual support, looking the reality in the face and placing all in the heart of God in deep trust. Jesus did not come to abolish suffering and death, but to show us the way to live them.

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