Editor's note: This is the third of a 6-part series addressing spiritual issues at the heart of the archdiocese, prepared by the Archdiocesan Spirituality Commission.

Grieving is our internal work; mourning is our public face. As the church and her priests continue to face deep mistrust in the wake of the scandalous actions or inactions of some of our priests and bishops, what frightens me is how little mourning I see, as if all the grief is trapped behind the eyes of the abused and the abusers, and not shared by the Church at large.

"Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh" (Luke 6.21). I recently looked at this beatitude afresh, with eyes wounded and tear-filled, over all that has and continues to happen in the church, and realized that God is giving us his blessing even in this dark hour. We often fail to see the Beatitudes for what they are: Jesus giving his blessing to some of the most despised and wounded individuals in the community. Surrounded by demoniacs, paralytics, the grieving and the diseased, crying, wailin, and begging to be healed, Jesus turns and says to them, "Blessed are you, beggars, weepers, hated and persecuted ones." This is more an affirmation and an empowerment than a teaching.

To grieve means "intense mental anguish; deep remorse, acute sorrow." It comes from the Latin word gravis, which means to oppress, or weigh heavy upon. Mourning is "to express public grief by conventional signs. For example, various cultures put a heavy importance on mourning at the time of death --- people dress in black, wail and cry, tear their clothing, or cover themselves with ashes. The people that Christ was blessing in the Sermon on the Mount were those whose grief was public. Without mourning, we cannot be spiritually or emotionally healthy. Jesus' blessing was and is a call to allow ourselves to be honest with others about our sense of pain and loss.

What is so holy about mourning and grieving that Jesus would bless it? First of all, it creates transparency in us. It tells people we are in pain and have experienced some type of loss. It opens us up for others to know. What we grieve over and mourn for reveals who we are.

Mourning is also a concrete act toward dealing with our grief. It helps others to aid us in our working out of that grief. We all know that talking about loss and sadness does not touch our hearts and change us in the same way that seeing someone cry does. The shortest verse in the New Testament is appropriately, "Jesus wept." Nothing else needed be said; his tears spoke volumes.

Mourning also helps us integrate our grief. Until we can live with the reality of the loss of trust in the church, the loss of parishioners, the loss of priests, the loss of what the church once was (and can be again), we have not integrated our grief.

"Blessed are you who weep now…." In the Eastern tradition, there are saints known for "the gift of tears." The theology of tears plays a particularly significant role in the teaching of Saints John Climacus, Isaac the Syrian, and Symeon the New Theologian. For Climacus, tears represent a renewal of the grace of Baptism:

"The fountain of tears after Baptism is greater than Baptism itself, although this may seem a bold thing to say…. Our first Baptism we received as babies, but we have all polluted it; through tears we regain the purity of our first Baptism" (Ladder of Divine Ascent, 7).

St. Isaac regards tears as the crucial boundary between the "bodily" and the "spiritual state," as the point of transition between the present age and the Age to come, which may be entered by anticipation even in this life.

We need to differentiate between sensual or natural tears and spiritual tears. Sensual tears are emotional; spiritual tears are ascetic. Sensual tears express our earthly sadness, living as we do in a fallen world, and are often the result of grief, anger, or frustration. Spiritual tears, as their name indicates, are a gift of grace from God the Holy Spirit, not just the result of our own efforts, and they are closely linked to prayer. Spiritual tears lead us to the new life of the Resurrection.

Spiritual tears are of two main types. On the lower level they are bitter; on the higher level, sweet. On the lower level they are a form of purification; on the higher level, of illumination. On the lower level they express contrition, sorrow for sin, grief at our separation from God --- Adam lamenting outside the gates of Paradise. On the higher level they express joy at God's love, thanksgiving at our undeserved restoration to son-ship. The lower level is exemplified by the prodigal son still in exile, weeping for his lost homeland; the higher level, by the prodigal son weeping for joy at the feast in his father's house. On the lower level tears are like "blood from the wounds in our souls," according to St. Gregory of Nyssa; on the higher level, they signify the total transformation of the human person by grace.

The one level of spiritual tears leads gradually to the other. What begins as tears of sorrow for sin are changed by degrees into tears of gladness. Tears, weeping and grieving, then, are not negative acts but positive, not destructive but lifegiving, not despondent but full of hope, for following Christ is simultaneously a sharing in Gethsemane and the Transfiguration. St. John Climacus concludes: "If you put on blessed and grace-filled mourning as a wedding robe, you will know the spiritual laughter of the soul" (Ladder, 7).

Father Alexei Smith is pastor of St. Andrew Russian Greek Catholic Church in El Segundo, director of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and a member of the Archdiocesan Spirituality Commission.