When a loved one passes on, overcoming grief can be an especially challenging task. Yet, many have found that through the teachings of Christian Science grief can be thoroughly and completely healed, whether that takes persistence in prayer or happens very quickly. I’ve learned this lesson through a number of experiences.
Many years ago I lost a close friend of mine and needed to feel God’s loving tenderness. I spent several evenings in a public library reading books describing what might happen to people after they pass away. I came away unsatisfied with this reading; it all seemed mysterious and confusing.
Then a church friend suggested I study references in the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy that included the word life, and ponder what these writings can teach us about life and existence. I took up the study, and in particular, I endeavored to gain a better understanding of divine Life, God. Additionally, I read articles and testimonies in the Christian Science periodicals about overcoming grief, which were also a great help.
Through this study I began to learn that I could mentally see my friend wrapped up in God’s impartial love, instead of binding up my thoughts of her in feelings of sorrow and grief. I needed to understand that my friend was God’s loved spiritual idea eternally, forever alive in Life. Even now, she exists in her oneness with our Father-Mother God.
Whenever feelings of separation or loneliness came to me, I prayed to overcome these feelings through affirming this absolute truth that no one can ever be separated from God, because we are each God’s reflection.
God, our Father-Mother, does not leave us wifeless, husbandless, motherless, fatherless, or friendless.
One day, I read the following promise of Christ Jesus: “I will not leave you comfortless” (John 14:18). I spent some time pondering this verse, and I realized that God, our Father-Mother, does not leave us wifeless, husbandless, motherless, fatherless, or friendless. The good in these relationships expresses God’s love for each of us as His children—a love that is constantly given to us here and hereafter, now and always, and which finds new forms of expression in our lives as circumstances change.
This new view of God’s goodness lifted me up from the sackcloth of sadness and sorrow. From that time on, my days were filled with an enlarged understanding of my relation to God and of God’s love for me and all. Gradually, the healing of grief came.
More recently, however, while I was taking my lunch break from work, I received an email from a friend informing me that a close mutual friend of ours had passed away. I burst into tears, overwhelmed with a deep sense of grief. Soon, I decided to call her husband.
When he answered the phone, I was about to offer my condolences when he said, “My wife is very much alive today.” Then he handed the phone to his wife, and she began to talk to me! I will never forget how shocked and thrilled I was to hear her voice.
I soon discovered that the friend who sent the initial email had mixed up the last name of the individual who had passed away, and unintentionally misinformed me. When I learned that my friend was alive, all the sorrow I had felt simply vanished. I learned that my grief was the direct result of a misunderstanding, and so the mourning was needless.
This proved to me the truth of a passage in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures where Mary Baker Eddy talks about how “a blundering despatch, mistakenly announcing the death of a friend,” will cause the same grief as the friend’s actual death. It concludes: “If a Christian Scientist had said, while you were laboring under the influence of the belief of grief, ‘Your sorrow is without cause,’ you would not have understood him, although the correctness of the assertion might afterwards be proved to you. So, when our friends pass from our sight and we lament, that lamentation is needless and causeless. We shall perceive this to be true when we grow into the understanding of Life, and know that there is no death” (pp. 386–387).
Soon after receiving the false report of my friend’s passing, I learned that other dear friends, individuals who had been an important part of my life for many years, actually did pass on. However, this time I did not dwell in grief or sorrow, because I had grown spiritually and learned lessons on the unreality of death and the needlessness of grief. I had learned that if we can clearly understand that those who have passed away are still going on and working out their salvation with God, then there is no reason for grief, even though we cannot communicate with them.
Additionally, as Mrs. Eddy assures us in Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, we can know that we will meet our departed loved ones again. She writes, “When we shall have passed the ordeal called death, or destroyed this last enemy, and shall have come upon the same plane of conscious existence with those gone before, then we shall be able to communicate with and to recognize them” (p. 42).
Are we preparing for this happy reunion? This preparation has nothing to do with waiting; it simply means growing in spiritual understanding now. This can be a time of growing in, and living, the understanding of our own and everyone’s true spiritual nature, eternally untouched by death. As we actively pray to imbibe the consciousness of divine Life each day, we can more clearly discern man’s inseparability from God. And we’re not working alone in this endeavor. God sends His angel messages to us, as He continues doing for our loved ones, wherever they are. Our spiritual communion with God enables us to perceive these angel messages and to be comforted—and healed of grief, right now.
