This past Tuesday at the Nebraska Synod’s annual Theological Conference,, when Bishop David deFreese shared a clip from A League of Their Own and mentioned that God makes some Christians “weepers,” I wrote myself a note to figure out why that sounded so familiar to me.

After a little digging, I discovered that I had just read a passage about the gift of tears the morning before. As part of my life as an Oblate, I pray several of the offices in the Liturgy of the Hours, the four-volume breviary used by priests and religious across the Catholic Church and by many Oblates regardless of their tradition. It would be tempting to call this a coincidence, but I’ve come to trust more in the guidance of the Spirit than the twists of fate. The second reading from the “Office of Readings” for Monday, Oct. 19, included this passage:

To spend much time in prayer is to knock with a persistent and holy fervor at the door of the one whom we beseech. This task is generally accomplished more through sighs than words, more through weeping than speech. He places our tears in his sight, and our sighs are not hidden from him, for he has established all things through his Word and does not seek human words. (From a letter to Proba by Saint Augustine, Bishop. Liturgy of the Hours IV, p. 413.)

There have been occasions in my devotions when God moves me to tears. It always feels like a gift, like I am somehow, as a gift of grace, brought into intimate contact with our Father, in companionship with his Son, as moved by their Spirit. My academic advisor in seminary, Robert W. Jenson, speaks of how the destiny of humanity is to be invited into the Divine Conversation that is the eternal life of the Trinity. It feels to me like these moments are glimpses of that coming reality. I don’t how we could be moved to anything other than tears, other than, perhaps, to be laughing while we cry!

Thanks to Bishop deFreese for his presentation and for bringing about this occasion for me to reflect a little bit on my emerging life of prayer.