“The fullness of existence, life’s true richness, does not consist solely in health and happiness but in an ever-expanding range of joy and sorrow; and the broader the range, the richer life becomes.” — Valentin Tomberg
When tragedy strikes, we are often left numb—confused, sorrowful, sometimes angry—searching for an explanation we never find. Death, or as St. Francis called it, Sister Death, arrives without warning or farewell. We are thrust into a mystery that resists all understanding. The shock moves through the body, mind, and soul. Time fractures. We stand at the threshold between what was and what can never be again, facing the unbearable truth that someone we love is gone—at least in the finite sense.
Yet even here, Tomberg’s words offer a strange consolation: the fullness of life includes both joy and sorrow. A life lived deeply is one that has known both. The one we have lost lived such a life—gathering love, struggle, beauty, and meaning. Their sudden departure does not diminish the richness of what they lived; it reveals it. Grief is the weight of that fullness—the measure of a life that mattered.
“For years I never knew whether the twilight was the ending of the day or the beginning of the night… For time is but a circle… and birth and death are one… What matters is the beauty gathered in this interlude called life.” — Winston O. Abbott
In the early days of loss, we live between two worlds: the world where they were, and this altered world where they are absent. Birth and death are not opposites, but movements within the same mystery. What endures is not arrival or departure, but the beauty gathered in between—the shared laughter, the love given and received, the ordinary moments now radiant with meaning.
This is grief’s paradox: we mourn because we loved. We ache because something beautiful was real. The depth of our sorrow is the measure of what was precious.
Saint Augustine wrote, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” In grief, this restlessness becomes acute. The absence of the one we love exposes the incompleteness at the center of human life. We reach out and meet silence. We long for one more voice, one more glance, one more moment. This ache is not weakness; it is revelation. It uncovers the soul’s hunger for what cannot be lost.
When death confronts us with the limits of all earthly comfort, the heart remains restless. Yet Augustine suggests this restlessness is itself a prayer—a reaching beyond the visible world, a longing for wholeness and reunion that only the Divine can fulfill. In grieving another, we encounter our own deepest desire for eternal love and communion.
Bishop Franzo King once shared that Alice Coltrane sent him an original copy of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. On it was a drawing—a breathing cloud—with the words: “Our God breathes through us so completely, so gently, we hardly feel it.”
In grief, breathing itself can feel difficult. Yet even here, a breath moves through us—quiet, sustaining, divine. The one we lost once carried this same breath. It animated their presence, their words, their love. That breath has not vanished; it has returned to its source—and it continues through us, even when we think we cannot go on.
Spirituality is not self-improvement or the pursuit of calm. Its true aim is participation in the Divine—télos, the fulfillment of our deepest purpose. Grief initiates us into this participation. Through loss, we are changed. Human nature is slowly transfigured by grace—not only spiritually, but bodily, and therefore cosmically.¹
The life we mourn is part of this transformation. Their living, their dying, and our grief are woven into a mystery of love at work in all things. Grace does not remove our pain; it transfigures it, drawing us more deeply into God and into communion with all who have loved and lost.
“All those on a liberation journey are called to listen, to learn, and then to act—to bring a more fruitful future into the world.” — Nahum Ward-Lev
Grief is a liberation journey. It frees us from the illusion of control and certainty. We are called first to listen—to silence, to the heart’s stirrings, to the quiet presence of God in devastation. Then we learn—about love’s cost, life’s fragility, and our capacity to endure. And when the time comes, we act—living with greater compassion, attentiveness, and love in honor of the one we have lost.
Across spiritual traditions, life culminates in trials resembling passion, crucifixion, and death—final movements of transformation that strip away illusion and reveal what is essential.
From Gino Vannelli’s “Across the Dark Night”
Where else would I go?
Who else would I turn to?
When I know in my heart
All things begin and end in You.
When loss shatters our world, faith is revealed for what it truly is. It is not certainty or explanation; It is not an answer. Faith is what remains when reason fails—the grace that sustains us when nothing else can.
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”— Winston Churchill
My dear friend, the musician and mystic Gino Vannelli, once described faith as resting on three pillars. In grief, these become our ground.
First, faith is born of direct encounter—a touch of the sacred beyond words or teaching. In sudden loss, we meet mortality and, paradoxically, eternity.
Second, faith is a sense beyond the senses—the soul’s perception of presence when sight and sound are gone.
“The wind blows wherever it pleases… So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” — John 3:8
Third, faith is like the wind: unseen, uncontrollable, known only by its effects. In grief, grace moves this way—through the strength to rise, moments of unexpected peace, the gradual easing of sorrow. Wisdom lies not in grasping this wind, but in learning to move with it.
Nothing of true importance can be endured without this kind of knowing—gnosis, the recognition of our divine nature. Grief asks everything of us: to love even when love wounds, to remain open when openness hurts, to give ourselves fully to life despite loss.
Loss reshapes memory. After someone we love is gone, we begin to see the past differently, discerning the gentle providence of the Divine in years that once appeared unremarkable or unfinished. While we were living them, their glory remained hidden. Only with distance do we behold their true beauty—and recognize how God’s saving love was at work within those relationships, quietly revealing itself over time.
The Flame That Never Dies: Plasma, Soul, and the Light Beyond
When we light a candle for the departed, we perform an ancient act of remembrance—a gesture that transcends culture and creed. The flame becomes a visible prayer, a bridge between worlds. We watch it flicker and dance, and something within us recognizes: this is what the soul looks like.
The candle flame is alive. It breathes oxygen, transforms matter into light and warmth, reaches upward as if yearning for something beyond itself. It is both substance and energy, matter becoming radiance. In its glow, we see the paradox of existence itself—how the physical and spiritual interpenetrate, how what seems solid is actually dancing energy.
Science names this state plasma—the fourth state of matter, beyond solid, liquid, and gas. It is the substance of stars, the fire of lightning, the aurora’s celestial curtain. Plasma is matter so energized that electrons break free from their atomic bonds, creating a luminous field of pure potential. The ancients intuited what physics now confirms: fire is not destruction but transformation, not ending but transfiguration into light.
This is why the candle flame speaks so powerfully to the soul. It reveals what we are beneath the density of flesh—beings of light, energy taking temporary form. The mystics have long taught that we possess not only a physical body but a plasma body, an energetic double that mirrors our spiritual essence. This luminous form—called by many names across traditions: the astral body, the subtle body, the spirit, the resurrection body—is woven of the same living fire that animates the stars.
When the physical body ceases, this plasma body does not extinguish. Energy cannot be destroyed; it only transforms. The soul, like the candle’s flame released from its wick, rises into a vaster atmosphere. What we call death is the soul’s liberation into its true element—not darkness, but an ocean of light we cannot yet perceive with mortal eyes.
“God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” — 1 John 1:5
The candle we light is thus more than a symbol. It is participation—our small flame joining the infinite radiance, our love made visible as light. In that flickering glow, we affirm what faith knows and grief must learn: the soul is inextinguishable. Love, which is the soul’s true substance, cannot be consumed. It only transforms, rising like flame, becoming one with the Light that has no beginning and no end.
When we sit before that candle in the darkness, we are not merely remembering. We are recognizing—seeing with the soul’s eye that the one we love has not vanished but transfigured, has not ended but expanded into the luminous reality from which we all emerge and to which we all return.
The Flame Burns On. The Soul Endures. Love Prevails.
We will never fully understand the passing of the innocent. That answer lies beyond us. Yet if we become still and listen with the soul, the veil between worlds thins. Peace arises—not as explanation, but as presence.
We carry the dead forward not by escaping grief, but by letting it enlarge our hearts—until they can hold sorrow and joy, absence and presence, death and the promise of eternal life. I believe in love. I believe love will prevail, for it is the strongest force in the universe.
When Pope Francis said, “Before creating the world, God loved. Because God is love,” he named the deepest truth.
May we surrender to that love—and become its living expression through compassion, kindness, and care. For me, life must be a response of love, often offered without full understanding. When we search for answers where none exist, we become confined to our mortal selves and lose sight of our true telos—to be a beacon of light.
- Lossky, Vladimir, Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, published in Paris 1944, translated in 1957, Latimer, Trend and Co Inc.
