“Shed tears, weep,” we were advised by the preacher of the homily at our friend Daria’s funeral. But the homilist added: “Move to the realities that made her laugh.”

Daria’s death was, in fact, reason for both tears and appreciation of a person whose short life had been full of joy and laughter. Dying at age 45, she left behind family members and friends who loved her for qualities of heart and soul that will continue to enrich our lives.

The preacher also urged us to cling to Daria’s faith. She was a woman of symbol, of sacrament, he reminded us, for whom God could be reached through the ordinary things of the world. She also felt a “hunger for the Eucharist,” and regarded it as a signpost on the path to everlasting life.

For the theme of her funeral, Daria had chosen words from the 13th century mystic Julian of Norwich. Printed on the front of the program was the statement “You will not be overcome .  .  .  He did not say: You will not be troubled, you will not be belaboured, you will not be disquieted; but he said, You will not be overcome.”

Certainly, Daria had ample reason to doubt this message. Her three-year struggle against multiple myeloma was enough to make anyone tempted to lose heart. And the prospect of leaving behind a son, aged ten, and a daughter aged three, would have deeply troubled any woman.

She also knew that death would take her away from a husband who had shown his love for her in many ways. During the last two years of her illness, he kept her extended family and her many friends informed by posting detailed information on a web site. He and Daria in their marriage had succeed in bringing together creatively his Jewish tradition and her Catholic one. They were able to draw on the two spiritualities for the benefit of their family.

When, at the funeral, a close friend named Mary recalled Daria’s multi-faceted personal gifts, she mentioned “her fabulous taste in clothes and her knowledge of the interesting saints.” More important still, Mary said that her friend “saw what was truly loveable in us.” That gift, she added, made Daria’s friends the luckiest people.

As an associate editor of Commonweal, the New York based magazine published by Catholic laypeople, Daria brought a scholar’s appreciation to both poetry and children’s literature. Among her own favorite poets were two famous for spiritual insight, Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

This funeral, as good funerals always do, stirred wonder at the mystery of death and the hope of life thereafter. How can it be that some people die at age 45 and others not until they reach 100? And why do some suffer so much while others go quickly and peacefully?

The writer Thomas Lynch does not have the answer to these questions any more than the average person. However, Tom combines two trades almost uniquely, those of poet and professional undertaker, giving him a perspective of special value.

In an essay entitled “Good Grief” in the just-published “The Best American Spiritual Writing 2004,” Lynch explains his idea of a good funeral: “It is about what we do−to act out our faith, our hopes, our loves and losses.”

He continues: “Our faith is not for getting around grief or past it, but for getting through it. It is not for denying death, but for confronting it. It is not for dodging our dead, but for bearing us up as we bear them to the grave or tomb or fire at the edge of which we give them back to God.”

This what Daria’s funeral was like, full of tears and loss, but also of love and hope. As we commended her to God, we knew ourselves to be taking leave of someone unique and irreplaceable but one who had left us an important part of herself.

The final hymn chosen by Daria for her funeral liturgy is one that is often sung at Thanksgiving. One verse thanking God is particularly evocative of someone who had the cherished the habit of both poetry and prayer: “For the joy of ear and eye/For the heart and mind’s delight/ For the mystic harmony/Linking sense to sound and sight.”

Richard Griffin

The following poem, entitled “If There Is No God,” appeared in the New Yorker of August 30, 2004. It bears the copyright 2003 by Czeslaw Milosz and is reprinted with the permission of the Wylie Agency Inc.

This five-line poem was translated from the Polish by Milosz and Robert Haas.  

If there is no God,
Not everything is permitted to man.
He is still his brother’s keeper
And he is not permitted to sadden his brother,
By saying there is no God.

Czeslaw Milosz, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980, died on August 14, 2004 at the age of 93. Born in Lithuania of Polish-speaking parents, he grew up in Poland, living through the horrors of both world wars. In 1960 he became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and was there in the era of student protest. In the latter stages of his life he returned to Poland, remaining there until his death.

In addition to his fame as a poet, Milosz acquired a reputation as a philosopher. For him, as Robert Taylor pointed out in a 1994 article for the Boston Globe, “the struggle between religious faith and nihilism characterizes our tormented century.” This struggle, reaching horrific outcomes in the 20th century, provided constant stimulus for Milosz’ reflection.

The poem quoted here is notable for its subtle irony. Though it envisions a situation in which God’s existence is denied, it suggests that belief in that existence is vital to human beings.

In the second line, the poet rejects the argument that many believers use to support their faith. Contrary to their claim about faith in God being necessary to prevent complete license for people to do anything, he affirms that even in a Godless world one would be constrained to respect human beings and the limits built into our lives.

Echoing a phrase from the Hebrew Bible, Milosz goes on to call each person “his brother’s keeper.” In the Book of Genesis, Cain murders his brother Abel and when the Lord asks where the murdered brother is, Cain replies with the question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” That is exactly what a brother must be, the Bible teaches, and Milosz endorses that teaching.

In the final two lines, the poet offers a delicious twist of conventional thinking. Part of being his brother’s keeper, Milosz suggests, is respecting that brother’s belief in God. To tell someone that God does not exist would be to violate a basic value in his life. Ultimately, it would cause him deep sadness, to say the least.

I find this brief poem, originally written in a language foreign to me, a succinct statement that reverberates beyond itself. At one and the same time, it is intellectually subtle and emotionally stirring. It speaks too obliquely to qualify as a statement of faith, yet these few words are suggestive of faith’s importance in the life of humankind.

Milosz was in a position to see that the last century marked the worst imaginable outcomes of atheistic ideologies; unfortunately, our current century shows the results of a misbegotten faith that leads to fanaticism.

Belief in God is a human value that does support human decency. But such faith can all too easily be used to violate the most basic human rights. The atrocities witnessed daily in Iraq and elsewhere give morbid testimony of what havoc religious zeal can unleash on the world.

Taking part in the funeral of a woman of faith this week has given me a renewed sense of the difference religious faith makes in the life of a human being. One such virtue was cited by a friend who spoke at the liturgy. “She saw what was truly loveable in us,” said that witness.

At its best, faith does provide this kind of vision. It can free us to notice things that otherwise remain off limits. The insight lent by authentic faith opens human hearts to depths not usually accessible.

As a poet, Milosz almost surely did not see himself as a spokesman for belief in God. And yet, given all the horrors that he lived through in his long life, he does give voice in only five lines to values that remain essential to human dignity.

Richard Griffin

Does belief in God make sense in an age when science has a growing capacity to explain the universe and human beings?  How can one maintain such belief when the world groans under so much evil and individuals suffer such intense grief?

For some 30 years, questions like these have intrigued Armand Nicholi, a psychiatrist and scholar. In a course at Harvard, Dr. Nicholi has approached such issues by contrasting the careers and teaching of Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis.

Now the Harvard professor’s work has inspired a four-hour series for public television. Entitled “The Question of God,” this program focuses on the lives of the two influential opposites as they wrestle with the possibility of faith. Through the use of historical footage and dramatizations of incidents in the lives of Freud and Lewis, the makers of the film have crafted a convincing portrayal of the belief/unbelief struggle.

Glimpses into the lives of the two principal figures in this documentary are interspersed with an ongoing discussion led by Dr. Nicholi. Bringing together a small group of people from various professional fields, he gets them to talk about their personal approaches to the great questions of belief and unbelief.

Freud was brought up religiously in a family that valued the Jewish tradition. By the time of his university studies, however, he had come to look upon this heritage skeptically. As he plunged deeply into medical science, he looked to such investigation rather than to the Bible and religion as the source of reliable knowledge. Ultimately, he came to reject belief in God as a human fantasy.

Lewis also grew up religiously, though his faith suffered an early blow at age nine when his mother died, despite his prayers for her survival. Later, the impact of the First World War, which wiped out a whole generation of young men, also made faith in God seem unreasonable.

Only after he became a professor at Oxford did Lewis gradually become convinced that God was the source of his own life and its sustainer.

Pairing Freud and Lewis may seem strange, if only because their place in history is so disproportionate. The Viennese doctor’s investigations into the unconscious make him a force to be reckoned with in modern life, whereas Lewis has a lesser influence through his religious, humanistic, and imaginative writings.

The Harvard professor Nicholi makes perhaps his most significant contribution to the discussion when he proposes that the two contrasted figures represent two different and conflicting sides of every person. Inside us is the double impulse both to believe and not to believe, the professor suggests.

This view can seem threatening to many religious people for whom it is important to think of themselves as solid in their belief. And yet, throughout the great tradition of saints and other great believers, there has always been a recognition that the belief/unbelief tendencies are not as far apart as some would like to think.

Experiencing the death of those we love, and encounters with other kinds of evil in the world, can shake the faith of the most robust believer. For Freud, the death of his dear daughter Sophie and, fours years later that of her son, along with the horrors of world war were enough to solidify his view of God as a purely human invention.

For Lewis, a second crisis happened late in his life with the death of his wife Helen Joy Davidman. This loss plunged him into a depression that, for a time, made him again doubt the reality of a loving God.

When they came to die, Freud in 1939, Lewis in 1963, each man remained convinced of his position about God. To Freud, God was an illusion; to Lewis, he was the source of all life and goodness.

Unfortunately, preview materials for the television program discussed here arrived too late for this column. Interested readers who may have missed seeing it broadcast can purchase the program in DVD or VHS format from WGBH in Boston, or wait for possible rebroadcast.

Unless they take an interest in philosophical and theological discussion, however, many viewers may find the discussion periods heavy going. The lives of Freud and C.S. Lewis are more likely to hold such viewers, because their triumphs and their crises are portrayed in often fascinating detail.

Richard Griffin

“Blessed are they who come here in God’s name.” All of us who were gathered at the Covenant Service for Children sang these words in Hebrew at the beginning of the ceremony.

The children –  Kristina, age 4, and Nicholas, age 3 – were the center of attention on the day they were formally received into the Jewish community. We, friends of Robert and Pamela, their new parents,  joined in celebrating an event filled with faith and tradition.

The Rabbi, Jonathan Kraus of Beth El Temple Center in Belmont, beautifully expressed the best hopes of us all when he wished for these children a life of learning, family, and good deeds. In his welcome, this community leader read from the tradition a passage that focused on guarding the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.

In the story, the Holy One asks who would make the best guarantors of these scriptures?  The answer was neither the ancestors not the prophets. Rather, the children would be the best keepers of the Torah.

Next, the two children were placed in a seat that represented the chair of Elijah. It was this great prophet who called the people of Israel back to their covenant with God when they had strayed. And it is Elijah who will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents.

The trajectory followed by Kristina and Nicholas over the past 10 months suggests that these are a brother and sister who have been uniquely blessed. After traveling to Ukraine a first time and being disappointed in their quest to adopt them, Robert and Pamela went back less than a month later and this time succeeded.

The new parents picked up the children in the city of Lugansk, a 12-hour train ride from the Ukrainian capital Kiev. Kristina and Nicholas then traveled with them overnight back to Kiev, then by plane to Krakow, Paris, and finally Boston. As their father reports the glad conclusion to their long journey, “When their passports were stamped on arrival at Logan Airport on the night of December 16, 2003, they officially became U.S. citizens and the journey was over.”

In her talk, Pamela recalled the history of her grandparents, immigrants who overcame poverty and passed on to their children a tradition of concern for family and the larger community. She also spoke with much affection of her mother Thelma Rose in whose honor the children were given additional new names, Rose and Thomas.

After listening to the accounts of the children’s arrival to their eventual home, the Rabbi joked about them both joining the ranks of the “wandering Jew” of the Hebrew tradition.

Before the end of the ritual, the children’s grandfather, a physician approaching 90 years of age, recalled with joy the birth of two other grandchildren and, by way of blessing, welcomed the addition of Kristina and Nicholas to their family circle.

Before lunch was served, guests raised their glasses in a toast and Rabbi Kraus led the traditional Hebrew prayer: “We praise You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the universe, Creator of the fruit of the vine.”

Then he blessed the two children with words based in the Psalms: “May God bless you and keep you. May the light of God’s presence shine upon you and be gracious to you. May God’s face always he lifted up to you and give you peace.”

The whole rite expressed the universality of God’s love. Many of the people who took part in it are not Jewish but we were made to feel part of the event. We were enabled to join wholeheartedly in the prayers that expressed joy in the children’s good fortune and that of their parents.

Though Kristina and Nicholas are still too young to understand the meaning of the event, even now they could feel themselves enveloped in a community of love. As they grow older, they can develop a deeper sense of the rich tradition that lies behind their being given Hebrew names.

If theirs becomes a spirituality that expresses the ideals held up for them in this ceremony, they will go far. Such values as these – learning, service to the community, fidelity to the covenant of the Jewish people, and respect for others –can help shape for them lives of real significance.

Richard Griffin

“The great use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.”

This saying of the 19th century American psychologist William James will immediately strike most people as true. James’s words express what in our hearts we obscurely feel, that to make our earthly existence meaningful we must find something valuable enough to endure beyond us.

If we do not discover meaningful activity, then we are saddled with negative feelings that get us down. Life comes to seem worth little, and we wonder if our having lived will make any difference at all.

But, let me suggest, our thinking about what lasts is usually too limited. We instinctively feel that we must put up a building, make a discovery, invent some product, or do something equally large-scale for us to memorialize ourselves. However, that way of thinking ignores other possibilities much closer at hand.

Given the human propensity to make a mess of our lives, achievement may instead involve us in repairing things in us that have gone wrong. To be human means, for most of us, to have made mistakes, some of them with terrible consequences, and working to set these errors right counts as a noble human enterprise.

I think that one of the great achievements of life is to get addictions under control. The person who manages to break with the destructive habits of alcoholism, for instance, has done at least one marvelous thing in his or her life. Given the difficulty of admitting that one is the captive of liquor and then turning to others for help, it counts as a lasting human triumph.

If you have accomplished this, you have achieved something lasting. And its value comes not from a single action but from a new way of life marked by daily vigilance over oneself.

A religious sister, Nancy Malone, describes what that experience is like. Caught by alcohol, she felt her spirit to be dying. As part of that spiritual death, she also felt “hopelessness, self-loathing, and shame.” After eight years of this humbling experience, she finally broke the habit’s grip, thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous and now knows “in my very woundedness and weakness and sinfulness,” her true self.

Reforming one’s life after being addicted to other drugs is another achievement that makes a life worthwhile. The terrible waste that a habit of cocaine or heroin inflicts on a person may mean that not everything can be restored. However, breaking with the habit ranks among the great human achievements.

Rebuilding one’s life after a divorce is another challenge that many people face. If you have found it a bitter experience, you may, as a result, have lost the ability to trust another human being.

The psychologist Thomas Moore explains well the challenge involved in restoring that trust: “You will be trusting again when you learn the essential paradox about love. You can only open your heart effectively when you are strong and insightful, when you love your own life and take care of yourself.”

This, to me, offers a difficult agenda to anyone who has been wounded in a love relationship. Starting over, rebuilding one’s place in the world, learning to know oneself in a new way, – – all require the most difficult work.

Repairing other family relationships that have been shattered by misunderstandings, slights, or downright insults also poses a major challenge. Estrangement among members of the same extended family is so widespread as to daunt optimism about human relations.

It is painful to hear about such breaks that so often involve adults no longer speaking to one another or accepting any other contact. Often this happens for reasons that, looked at objectively, do not justify any kind of break.

Two women whom I know have reestablished their close friendship after 13 years of no contact. The reconciliation has come about because one of them offered her friend an apology. Of their restored friendship, the other woman now says: “I have to hand it to her – – it is very seldom that someone apologizes and does not make any excuses.”

What I am suggesting here is an alternative way of looking at human stature. Rather than focusing on headline material whereby one creates something big and obviously impressive – – a building, an organization, a book, a film, – – we might look toward those who have repaired something in their lives.

This, too, qualifies for what William James called “something that will outlast life.”

Richard Griffin

A society page newspaper story last month told of a bride who, 11 months before her wedding, suffered almost fatal injuries from being hit by a passing van. During that agonizing time, she had to recover from two fractures of her skull and multiple complications in her internal organs. It often seemed that she would not wake from a coma induced by doctors to relieve pressure on her brain.

During this crisis, her family members, themselves Jewish, welcomed prayers from members of their own tradition and from other religions. The woman’s mother reached out to Muslims and Buddhists, among others. And, according to the newspaper account, “she even got a strand of Mother Teresa’s hair.”

This detail struck me for what it says about the human impulse to seek contact with people recognized as holy. This impulse transcends the divisions that separate us into different religions and spiritualities. In the hour of her daughter’s need, this woman reached out to a person famous for her personal holiness.

Did the bride’s mother believe that contact with Mother Teresa’s hair would make her daughter recover? This is probably the wrong question. Rather, in her love for her adult child, this woman reached out in all directions, hoping that some combination of medical science and spiritual power would lead to the happy outcome that actually took place.

I remember early in my religious life when the arm of the 16th century Jesuit Saint Francis Xavier was brought to our community for veneration. It struck me as bizarre in some ways that a human limb, preserved for hundreds of years after the saint’s death, would be displayed for public view. Nonetheless, it clearly stirred deeply spiritual feelings among those to whom it was presented.

Members of the religious community were invited to kiss the glass case in which the arm was preserved. Despite a certain reluctance, I joined others in this act of veneration for a saint who was held up as a model for us by reason of his missionary activities and his personal holiness.

My religious tradition, like that of some others, tends to be realistic about the human body. This tradition distrusts exclusive focus on the spirit to the neglect of the body to which it is intimately joined.

It recognizes the material part of being human and does not shrink from facing our pattern of flesh and blood. The longstanding custom among us of cherishing the relics of people recognized as close to God testifies to a faith that accepts body as well as soul.

Belief in the power of objects associated with saints can be abused. It is possible to substitute such relics for God, to worship mere things rather than the source of all creation. However, there is something profoundly moving in the instinct to associate ourselves and our loved ones with those we admire for their whole-hearted devotion to God.

Hidden in this impulse lies the recognition that we ourselves are not saints. We look up to fellow human beings who have resisted the many temptations to turn away from loving God and neighbor. They are people who have risen to the occasion, when engulfed in crisis, as we ourselves perhaps did not.

However, I believe that there are many saints among us who will never be recognized as such. No church will ever canonize them, nor will anyone call them blessed. Still, contact with them can benefit us, can have a healing influence on our lives. Whatever rubs off from people like this is all to our advantage.

That helps explain why we often treasure possessions left behind by friends who have died. Right now, I look forward to receiving a book or something else from the estate of a friend who recently passed on. He was holy, in my judgment, and I believe that being gifted by something he left behind will inspire my spiritual life.

This week some of his other friends and I will gather to share appreciations of him. Looking back over his life, we will recall how he served several different communities extraordinarily well. We will be meeting in his house, so relics of him will surround us, reminding us of our continued love for him.

Richard Griffin

Perhaps the babies themselves realized that theirs was a good baptism because they did not cry very much, even when the water was poured over their head. The five of them seemed to enter into the spirit of the liturgy held last Sunday afternoon at St. Michael’s Church in North Andover. These infants did remarkably little fussing during the 45 minute rite of baptism that symbolically introduced them into the life of faith.

Some parents prefer a ceremony in which theirs is the only child baptized. However, as this group baptism showed, having several children presented for this rite has the advantage of revealing baptism as a shared ritual whereby each child enters into the worldwide community of faith.

The diversity of the people of God thus appears more vividly when baptism is shared among several families. Members of the congregation see how the faith community is made up of all kinds of people, sharers in the same beliefs but otherwise very different. Rich and poor, white people and those of color, older and younger, all benefit from God’s gifts.

Though on this occasion I knew only one child, my 6-month old grand-nephew who was christened Luke Vincent, I found myself entering into the entire ceremony as an involved worshipper. Credit for this shared feeling of involvement belongs, in large part, to Father John Delaney, one of the clergy serving St. Michael’s parish.

Father Delaney, a native of Lawrence, skillfully managed to hold the attention of family members, friends, and others who had gathered for the christening. Throughout the ceremony he stressed God’s love as the dominant theme of the event. Never did he mention hell, a staple of such services in the old days, but instead he emphasized the love expressed by the sacrament of baptism.

He also explained the sacramental meaning of baptism. Sacraments are external signs that express the graceful action of God on the soul and body of human beings. In the case of baptism, these signs involve materials as well as gestures: water, which signifies life in the Hebrew Bible as well as in the New Testament, and oil, an ancient symbol of strength.

More informally, Father Delaney also stressed the responsibilities and privileges belonging to godparents. In the modern world, this role tends to suffer neglect; but, as Father Delaney pointed out, a godparent can play an immensely important function in the life or a child, and even of an adult.

A godparent can be supportive in great and small ways: remembering birthdays, attending soccer games and school plays, sharing in birthdays and other major celebrations. On the day of baptism, the godparents begin this process, holding candles to symbolize the child’s new life, and draping the traditional white garment (made by members of the parish) over the child’s festive clothes.

Taking part on Sunday in the baptism of my grand nephew put me in mind of my own baptism. Fortunately, family archives have preserved a book of childhood remembrances that details that ceremony. It took place at St. John’s Church in Peabody on September 12, 1928, a date that is beginning to seem quite far back in history.

My godparents were my father’s brother and my mother’s sister, people for whom I came to have strong affection. The priest who baptized me was my father’s uncle, Father John Griffin, then pastor of a church in Holyoke.

My reason for recalling this event of long ago is to recall the beginnings of my own spiritual life. That pouring of water over my head signaled an inner life in the Spirit that has led to a richness that I regard as a precious gift. Baptism started me on a life that has inner meaning, even when the inevitable difficulties of human life have pressed upon my body and soul.

Watching Luke Vincent and the other children receive the sacrament that has brought them into the faith community stirred in me feelings of hope for their spiritual life. I wish for them, their parents, godparents, other family members, and friends, blessings that may lead to years full of love.

May these children grow into fine human beings, true to the grace of their baptism and happy to acknowledge God’s continuing love for them.

Richard Griffin