By the early years of the twentieth century, Mother Mary Loyola had cemented her reputation as one of the best Catholic writers of her generation. But the First World War prompted her to turn her pen to a very different purpose: offering consolation to the innumerable mothers, wives, sisters, and others who had lost loved ones to its ravages.
Her intimate knowledge of sorrow gave her unusual insight into the task. Having lost both parents and two siblings when she was just nine years old, and having endured many further bereavements over the course of her long life—including, more recently, beloved former students fighting in the trenches of the Great War—Mother Loyola knew that grief cannot be answered with easy words.
In Blessed Are They That Mourn, she turns instead to the solid ground of Christian faith and hope. Drawing continually upon Scripture, she leads the bereaved to Christ, Who not only knows our sorrows, but has Himself entered into the depths of human suffering. She helps the mourner to see loss in the light of the Cross, the Resurrection, the Communion of Saints, and the promised reunions of Heaven—not with the intent to make grief unreal, but to keep grief from becoming hopeless. For the lesson of Job is not that perfect resignation can blunt the anguish of loss, but that, being brought to our knees, there we worship.
Written for a generation surrounded by death, this little book has lost none of its power to console. For anyone struggling to reconcile the loss of a loved one with faith in the goodness of God, Mother Loyola offers something stronger than sentiment: a way to mourn as one who has hope.
5.5" x 8.5" paperback 114 pages
