The first reading from mass today tells us how the prophet Jeremiah prayed for the gift of tears: “Let my eyes stream with tears day and night, without rest” (Jer 14:17). Jeremiah’s people were destroying themselves by turning away from the God of their ancestors and living instead according to their personal whims. Jeremiah wanted himself and his people to feel remorse and sadness for their error, so that they would change their ways and be converted back to the one true God. He wanted tears as a sign of conversion.
By coincidence (if such things can be said to exist) today is also the feast day of St. Ignatius Loyola, whose spirituality serves as the inspiration for this website, and who was known to have the gift of tears. In artwork, he is often depicted having tears on his face, for example, here. His enemies would claim that his tears were proof of his frailty, senility, and weakness. His friends, in his defense, claimed that Ignatius was no frail, senile or weak man, but that, on the contrary, he was a force to be reckoned with, founding hospices and universities and a world-wide religious order, negotiating with cardinals and princes with a will of iron. His tears were signs of spiritual gifts, Ignatius explained, when they were “(1) at our own or other people’s sins, (2) at the mysteries of Christ our Lord in this life or the next, or (3) at the consideration and love of the divine Persons” (Letter 466, Letters and Instructions of St. Ignatius Loyola, Institute of Jesuit Sources, Saint Louis, 2006).
Today let us ask for the great saint’s intercession, that he would ask for us, his friends, to have the gift of tears.