By FATHER TRYPHON

As an island community, we have had more than our share of death. We’ve witnessed in the past few years the suicides, as well as the accidental deaths, of many of our precious young people, and these deaths have exposed our frailty and our grief. Yet these deaths do not reveal our finiteness, but have revealed our infiniteness, our eternity.

In the face of a lot of adversity and extreme loss, we islanders are still a people who care about each other and who are there for those who are suffering pain and loss. This island is a very special place because when one family experiences loss, we all feel that loss. In some ways that is something to be thankful for, for even in their loss, those who are struggling with pain and grief are not alone. In the good and the bad, we islanders stand together.

And in all the sickness, sorrow, loss, illness and suffering we experience, all this sorrow is not inflicted upon us by a wrathful god, but allowed by a loving God for purification and transformation. Through our suffering, God completes our creation and makes us whole, and through our suffering, we are able to feel the suffering of others and are given the ability to reach out with our love and support in times of sorrow and pain.

Our communal mourning is an ancient ritual, one in which Jesus participated. For all of us, all people, death is a common element of humanity, the common trait that we share and the common enemy of our loved ones. And like grief, victory over death binds people together in a larger, more powerful community, the community that is found in faith.

As death reveals our infiniteness, the Christian does not ponder the mystery of death in a way that is paralyzing, negative and apathetic, but in a way that is productive, positive and dynamic.

God, to whom we can entrust our soul, is a good and perfect God. This God will do what is right with our child, what is just with our brother and what is honorable with our friend. There is no saying, no claim, no scripture that will give us peace in our loss right now or even calm our troubled souls, but we can find comfort and peace in God who is present with us and in us and through us as we join together in the intimacy of grief.

— Father Tryphon is abbot of the All-Merciful Saviour Orthodox Monastery and the police and fire chaplain for Vashon Island.