Our Lady Saint MaryBarry, J. G. H. (Joseph Gayle Hurd)
Religion
Our Lady Saint Mary
Barry, J. G. H. (Joseph Gayle Hurd)
Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint -- Meditations
But are we to think of the death of a child as a disaster? Has any
actual victory redounded to the Prince of Power of the Air? One
understands of course the grief and sense of loss that attends the death
of any child, the breaking of the dreams which had gathered about its
future. What the father and the mother dreamed over the cradle and
planned for the future does not come to pass--all that is true. But in a
consideration of the broader interests involved, does not the death of a
baby have a meaning far deeper than a disappointment of hopes and
dreams? It is true, is it not? that the coming of the child brought
enrichment into the life of its parents? There was a new love born for
this one child which is not the common property of all the children of
the family, but is the peculiar possession of this child and its
parents. Life--the life of the parents--is better and nobler by virtue
of this love. They understand this, because when they stand by the side
of the child's coffin they never feel that it had been better that this
child had not come into existence. And more than that: as they commit
this fragile body to the grave they know that there is no real sense in
which they can say that they have lost this child. Rather, the child is
a perpetual treasure, for the moment contemplated through tears, but
presently to be thought of with unclouded joy. It is so wonderful a
thing to think of this pure soul caught back to God; to think of it
growing to spiritual maturity in God's very presence; to think of it
following the Lamb withersoever He goeth. Yes: to think of it also as
our child still, with our love in its heart, knowing that it has a
father and a mother on earth, and, that, just because of its early
death, it can be to them, what otherwise they would have been to it--the
guard and helper of their Jives. In God's presence are the souls of
children as perpetual intercessors for those whom they have left on
earth; and they may well rejoice before God in that what appeared the
tragedy of their death was in fact a recall from the field of battle
before the testing of their life was made. We wept as over an
irreparable loss,
While into nothingness crept back a host
Of shadows unexplored, of sins unsinned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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