Understanding Why Jesus Wept: A Mother’s Meditation After Miscarriage

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In the eleventh chapter of John’s Gospel, we encounter a verse which, being only two words long, is among the shortest and most mystifying in Scripture.

Jesus wept.

He who is God, “infinitely perfect and blessed in himself,” wept? (CCC 1)

He who told the widow mother, “Do not weep,” though her son lay dead? (Luke 7:11-17)

He who told Jairus and his wife not to weep for their daughter, “for she is not dead but sleeping”? (Luke 8:40-56)

He who said, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awake him out of sleep”? (John 11:11)

He who will lift his voice and call the dead man out of his tomb?

Christ wept? What for?

“Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany…”

My husband and I were overjoyed to discover I was pregnant again. We’d had an early miscarriage the year before, and, though we were wary, we were delighted that our daughter would have a younger sibling.

My husband and I told our daughter immediately that New Baby was coming after her birthday. Though just a toddler, she began picking out toys to give to New Baby when he or she arrived. In her enthusiasm, it was not long before she had shared the news of New Baby with our family and friends. Soon, it seemed, just about everyone knew. Before I knew it, I was filling out paperwork for maternity leave and figuring out how we would adjust our schedules for two kids at home.

Amid all the joyful planning — What should we be for Halloween? Should we keep this toy for New Baby or get rid of it? We have to get the bedside bassinet from the basement. — there was one morning when I awoke with a strange conviction that something was wrong. I knew something was wrong before I had a reason to know something was wrong. A horrible fear began to grip my heart. For some reason, I could not get Jairus and the woman with the flow of blood out of my head.

It is my custom to go begging for prayers, and so I did. I invoked friends, family and coworkers to intercede for me. I sought recourse in the Surrender Novena: Jesus, I entrust myself to you. Take care of everything.

I went to Mass that evening. I caught a deacon on the way in and asked him to bless me. I felt I needed a miracle, though I had no evidence that there was a need for one. I begged God to make everything all right. It seemed impossible to accept what my fear anticipated, but I asked for the grace that I might.

At the Consecration, as Christ himself became present before my very eyes and a deep peace the world cannot give washed over me. He sounded in my soul, “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”

With it came a certainty that could not be doubted. It did not say “You will have it your way;” it said simply “All will be well.”

At the same moment, a name came into my mind for the child. A name which was perfect for a thousand reasons, most of which I didn’t yet see. It was the kind of name that fits in place like only something holy can. A name which paid homage to both my other children (the one who lives with me and the one who lives with God), a name which honored the patrons of the church in which I sat, the saint of the day, the month and the year. Parents who have found the name for their child will understand that once I knew it, it was impossible to call my child anything else.

With her name on my lips, I received Christ Jesus in the Eucharist. As my body was nourished by him, so too would the child in my womb receive nourishment from him through me, and “the babe in my womb leaped for joy.”

I miscarried directly after Mass.

“...It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by means of it…”

And I wept.

“Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.”

Miscarriage is a strange grief to bear.

It is strange in its hiddenness, strange in its potency, strange in its longevity.

It is a grief heavy in its unsharable-secrecy: “This is a grief so deep within me that I barely know myself apart from it.” And, at the same time, it is a grief so unbelievably common that it can’t be named without a chorus of “You too?” sounding from every corner. No one can know my grief, though it is a grief borne by the great multitude.

Further, there is a kind of insecurity in the grief of miscarriage — that one does not really deserve to mourn the loss of a child known for so short a time. We tell ourselves that, since there are so many others who have suffered so much more, our grief is illegitimate. As if one could ever mourn the loss of a child too much.

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Martha and Mary both put the complaint to Christ when he arrives in Bethany: “We who served you at table and we who listened at your feet — we want to know — where were you?” With the Psalmist, “Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint!”

In miscarriage, there is frequently no way to gather the bodily remains, no tomb to weep in front of, no body to anoint. The loss is disorienting. One stumbles and gropes in the dark, so to speak. “They have taken him, and I do not know where they have put him.”

The sudden loss of those precious and silly dreams — no Piglet costume at Halloween, no highchair at Thanksgiving, no fourth stocking at Christmas. These unimportant details that, by their loss, acquire the greatest possible importance. Every future hope had already been fashioned to include this child, so that there simply is no future apart from her.

I have nine siblings, and my husband has five. I saw, all at once, my daughter growing up alone, surrounded by toys instead of brothers and sisters.

My prayers were all monosyllabic. I found myself unable to petition God at all, so I sought others to petition for me. “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.”

My parents came to my house that evening, and my dad (a deacon) gave me a blessing. The Church, in her wisdom, does not condescend as we are often tempted to; she does not dismiss the suffering with well-intended platitudes, nor does she merely indulge the sorrow as if the Christian could live apart from hope. Rather, the blessing speaks to the mourners with the words of Lamentations:

“My soul is deprived of peace, I have forgotten what happiness is; I tell myself my future is lost, all that I hope for from the LORD. But I will call this to mind, as my reason to have hope: The favors of the LORD are not exhausted, his mercies are not spent; They are renewed each morning, so great is his faithfulness. My portion is the LORD, says my soul; therefore I will hope in him.”

“For those who trust in God,” the blessing goes, “in the pain of sorrow there is consolation, in the face of despair there is hope, in the midst of death there is life”(From the Blessing of Parents after a Miscarriage or Stillbirth).

“But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”

What kind of faith can speak like Martha in that eleventh chapter of John? Her brother, Lazarus, who loved Christ, who was loved by Christ, who believed in Christ, has lain dead in the tomb for four days. Christ tells her, “He who believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” And she responds, “Yes.” What kind of faith is that which can answer “yes” though her brother has lain dead for four days?

The beginning and end of the Christian life is the unmerited love of God. That is to say, it is all gift. Though the heart be pulverized, it is not destroyed, for love holds it in being.

I could not find in myself any will to petition God, though I knew I needed help desperately. Coworkers, family, friends and the providential stranger lay siege to Heaven on my behalf. I learned later of one friend who offered up tremendous physical suffering for me.

The consequence of their prayer was immediate, obvious and stunning.

I have never before experienced such pure sorrow. That is, sorrow which was purely sorrow and not anything else. Sorrow which was single-hearted. Sorrow which did not become despair, or resentment, or jealousy, or fear. Sorrow which was, so to speak, one color all the way through.

“Jesus wept.”

Miscarriage does not simply end after the baby’s death. It doesn’t end after the ER trip or the doctor’s final verdict. It drags on and on and endlessly on as the symptoms linger. It includes follow-ups and weekly blood draws at the clinic, which seem to coincide with the weekly prenatal appointments of familiar strangers whose bellies grow bigger while one’s own hCG levels only gradually dwindle.

There are a thousand occasions for jealousy, for resentment, for shaking one’s fist at Heaven, but they profit nothing. I was not angry with God. How could I be? Could I complain to Heaven that I had been wronged because I, in some way, was owed this child?

It was sheer grace, from beginning to end, that filled me with pure sorrow so that nothing in jealousy or resentment or despair could draw my soul.

“Your baby will rise again,” they assured me. “Yes, I know she will rise again on the Last Day.” 

One child lives with me, and the other two live with God. The knowledge was certain as the sun. Yet, this knowledge neither lessened my grief nor introduced any new passion.

From start to finish, I was all sorrow. Not angry sorrow. Not sorrow that bitterly accepted the will of God. Just sorrow. I knew my baby was alive with the same certainty that I knew she had died.

It was at that moment that I began to understand something of Christ’s tears in Bethany. He who had come to awaken Lazarus wept. He did not weep for any reason other than that he loved Lazarus and Lazarus had died.

There is no contradiction. We entrust our dearly departed to the God of Infinite Bliss, but we weep to see them go. So Christ asks, “Where have you lain him?” And he who told his first disciples to “Come and see” follows to the tomb of his friend.

“Lazarus, come out!”

The promises of God are not exhausted, for his mercy endures forever.

He knows what he is about.

He called his friend by name. He summoned the dead to life. He knows what he is about.

I spent my last hour with my baby in Mass, surrounded by “so great a cloud of witnesses.” I received a name to call her before her departure — perhaps the very name by which Christ might call her. As the Body of Christ is pilgrim, penitent and triumphant all together, she cannot be lost to me.

The God who raised Lazarus is yet among us, and he does not leave us to weep alone.