My son, let tears fall down over the dead, and begin to lament, as if you had suffered great harm yourself; and then cover his body according to the custom, and neglect not his burial.
All Commentaries on Wisdom of Sirach 38:16 Go To Wisdom of Sirach 38
Paulinus of Nola
AD 431
Before all else, I will praise in you the fruitful work of your Christian piety. In fact, the sacred Scripture shows that your behavior is also pleasing to God when it says, "Shed tears over the dead. As one who suffers grievously, begin the lament, and do not neglect his tomb." Our patriarchs are also examples of the performance of this ritual. Abraham, the father of our faith, wept over Sarah, the mother of our vocation, not because he doubted ever seeing her again but out of sorrow for having lost her. How could the father of our faith have had doubts about the resurrection, he who was the first to hear the divine promise? Mindful of her human condition, however, he did not despise care for the body in view of eternal salvation, but after acquiring a field suited for the burial, he interred his dead wife in an honorable grave. In this way he wanted to show what people should do for the dying, since he, immediately after leaving the land of his ancestors at the call of God, and though acquiring no land among the fertile plots of the various countries, nevertheless wanted to buy"he, the pilgrim of every nation"a small fistful of dirt for the burial, that is, a perennial and permanent possession, a field not for profit but for eternal rest. Jacob also honored his beloved and awaited Rachel, not only with a famous mausoleum but also with an epitaph that was a religious comfort in his suffering and at the same time a testimony to posterity. Although he marked that grave with a mournful epitaph about his dead wife, with a prophetic spirit he foresaw that whereas the law was passing away, the gospel was coming into force. In the folds of this mystery, in many places the wife of the patriarch represented the image of the church. Nevertheless, as I believe, she dies as a symbol of the synagogue and in her delivery generates the son of pain, whereas the Virgin, also by childbirth, generates the end of the law: the end of the law is Christ. Tobias also suggests to us a holy and sanctified hope through his care for burial, and in a special way he was justified by the Lord for taking the initiative in this task, and indeed he was praised by the word of the archangel because he preferred the burial of a poor person to his own nourishment. Ignoring his stomach because he was famished in soul, he preferred to die of bodily hunger than of spiritual, so that he would be an example to us to prefer physical fasting at any cost, so as to secure for ourselves the salvation of our souls. See the goodness of care for the dead, see the goodness of the tears of love with which father Abraham desired to bury the mother of the ancient promises. Good also were the pious tears that Joseph the righteous shed for his dead father and the prayerful tears with which David bathed his bed almost every night. But why recall the grief of the holy patriarchs? Jesus mourned his friend, condescending to assume even this passion of our human condition, to the point of shedding tears for the dead and acting like a weak human person toward him whom he was going to raise by divine power. In that single man, however, the merciful and compassionate Lord also grieved over the condition of the human race, and in those tears with which he grieved our sins, he also cleansed them.
