Pray for the Gift of Holy Tears
Pope Francis, Pastor John Piper, & the Desert Fathers on Holy Tears (Day 26 in 'The Art of Dying Well' by St. Robert Bellarmine, Ch. 8)
St. Augustine once said: “The one who sings prays twice.” As we all know, singing can move the heart and break down walls of pride so that we express our deepest thoughts and emotions before God. We have recently begun chanting the ‘Our Father’ during our worship gathering (Holy Mass), and I have found that I savor each word much more profoundly when sung.
Deep emotions or affections for God are involved in true prayer, which can at times, lead to holy tears. The great desert father, Evagrius Ponticus, once wrote: “Before all else, pray to be given tears, that weeping may soften the savage hardness which is in your soul and, having acknowledged your sin unto the Lord (Psalm 31:5), you may receive from Him the remission of sins” (De Oratione 79, #5, 1168D). Repackaging St. Augustine’s words, we could say that “The one who weeps prays thrice.” In chapter 8 in ‘The Art of Dying Well,’ Bellarmine dives deep into the nature of prayer and references St. Jerome who also summarizes many of the fathers on the ‘gift of holy tears’ during prayer.
St. Jerome in his Dialogues against the Luciferians, writes: "I commence prayer: I should not pray, if I did not believe; but if I had true faith, this heart, which God sees, I would cleanse; I would strike my breast: I would water my cheeks with my tears: I would neglect all attention to my body and become pale; I would throw myself at the feet of my Lord, and wash them with my weeping, and wipe them with my hair…Where is our faith? Do we suppose that Jonas prayed thus? The three children? Daniel in the lions den? Or the good thief on the cross?" (Bellarmine, The Art of Dying Well, Chapter 8)
Although tears are not automatically a sign that we are authentically approaching God or truly weeping over our sins, it is difficult to imagine actually loving God without tears at times. As Pope Francis reminds us, "Can one love in a cold way? Can one love by function, by duty? Certainly not.”
Pastor John Piper agrees: “Pray that God will give you holy tears. They are a work of grace, not a work of nature. Natural tears are sweet. But holy tears are from the Spirit.”
During Lent each year, Eastern Catholics & Orthodox generally read the 6th century work called ‘The Ladder of Divine Ascent’ by St. John Climacus, who was the Abbot of the St. Catherine Monastery on Mount Sinai. In the work, he references the importance of praying with tears…
“Greater than Baptism itself is the fountain of tears after Baptism, even though it is somewhat audacious to say so. For Baptism is the washing away of evils that were in us before, but sins committed after Baptism are washed away by tears. As Baptism is received in infancy we have all defiled it, but we cleanse it anew in tears. And if God in His love for humanity had not given us tears, few indeed and hard to find would be those in the state of grace.” (Ibid. 804B).
Finally, the great spiritual master and monastic, St. Isaac of Nineveh, writes that the gifts of tears aid us in arriving to a deeper state of prayer, where the chambers of our heart become a dwelling place or Temple for the presence of the living God.
“When a man is deemed worthy to receive the gift of abundant tears which come over him without effort. For tears are established for the mind as a kind of boundary between what is bodily and what is spiritual and between passionateness and purity. Until a man receives this gift, the activity of his work is still in the outer man and he has not yet at all perceived the activity of the hidden things of the spiritual man. But when a man begins to relinquish the corporeal things of the present age and crosses this boundary to that which lies inside of visible nature, then straightaway he will attain to the grace of tears. And from the first hospice of this hidden discipline tears begin to flow and they lead a man to perfection in the love of God. The more he progresses in this discipline, the more he is enriched with love, until by reason of his constant converse with tears he imbibes them with his food and drink. …
There are tears that burn and there are tears that anoint as with oil. All tears that flow out of contrition and anguish of heart on account of sins dry up and burn the body, and often even the governing faculty feels the injury caused by their outflow. At first a man must necessarily come to this order of tears and through them a door is opened unto him to enter into the second order, which is superior to the first; this is the realm wherein a man receives mercy. These are the tears that are shed because of insight; they make the body comely and anoint it as if with oil, and they pour forth by themselves without compulsion. Not only do they anoint the body with oil, but they also alter a man’s countenance.”
St. Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian (I, 37), translated by the Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston, 1984. p. 174-175.
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