There are many phrases and sayings that have the word “tears” in it.
There are “moved to tears”, “burst into tears”, “blood, sweat and tears”, “reduced to tears”, “bored to tears”, and then there is this rather unique phrase “crocodile tears”.
The phrase derives from an ancient belief that crocodiles shed tears while consuming their prey. Strange, isn’t it?
“Crocodile tears” is used to mean a false, insincere display of emotion such as a hypocrite crying fake tears of grief. That is certainly not easy to do that.
It is said that tears are 1% water and 99% emotions, but crocodile tears can be said to be 1% water and 99% deception.
Although much has been said about crocodile tears, much more has also been said about tears that had dropped on the face of the earth.
And most of these are tears of grief and sadness, tears of pain and suffering, tears of disappointment and rejection. We may recall St. Monica’s 30 years of tears for her son St. Augustine before he was finally converted.
Yes, the human race has shed tears since the beginning of time and the tears have not stopped since then.
But it is not only human beings that shed tear?. Would we think that God also sheds tears?
In the gospels, we can remember two occasions that Jesus shed tears.
One was when Jesus shed tears over Jerusalem because it didn’t heed the call to repentance and hence it would fall into the hands of its enemies.
The other was when Jesus wept over the death of his good friend Lazarus.
Today’s gospel began with this line “When Judas had gone” and then it continued with Jesus giving a teaching to His disciples.
There was no mention of how Jesus felt but we may wonder if He was holding back His tears of disappointment and rejection.
He had washed the feet of Judas, He had offered him a piece of bread, which was a sign of love and friendship, He even tried to hint to Judas that He knew about his plans to betray him.
But it was futile and it was in vain. Judas was determined to do what he had planned to do and even Jesus could not stop him.
Jesus had to let him go and do what he wanted to do. The pain and the hurt that Jesus felt would have probably made Him burst into tears, tears of disappointment and rejection.
Even before the spear pierced His heart, it was already broken by the betrayal of Judas.
But here is where Jesus turned His suffering into strength, and His tears into a teaching.
From the depths of His heart, Jesus gave His disciples a new commandment: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also must love one another. By this love you have for one another, everyone will know that you are my disciples.
This new commandment of Jesus to love one another will give us a new perspective to our own tears.
Pope Francis has this to say about tears – Sometimes in our lives, tears are the lenses we need to see Jesus.
Jesus could have shed tears not just over how Judas betrayed Him, but also how Peter denied Him and also how the other disciples deserted Him in His darkest moments.
But instead of shedding tears, Jesus went on to shed His blood so as to show how much He loved us and how much He wants us to love one another.
There is a story of a wise man who went to a party and while he was among the people, he cracked a joke and the people laughed like crazy.
After a while he cracked the same joke again, and this time less people laughed. After a while, he cracked the same joke again, but this time no one laughed.
Then he smiled and said: If you can’t laugh over the same joke again and again, then why do you keep crying over the same thing again and again?
That brings us to the 1st reading to what Paul and Barnabas said to the disciples to encourage them to persevere in their faith: We all have to experience many hardships before we enter the kingdom of God.
So there will be hardships in life and it will happen again and again. There will be pain and hurt, grief and sadness, disappointment and rejection.
There will be tears in our eyes. But those tears must also help us to see Jesus who by the shedding of His blood has poured love into our hearts so that we can keep on loving in spite of the tears.
Just as there is no rainbow without the rain, the heart would not have a rainbow if the eyes had no tears.
Yes, in life there will be tears, but tears are also the lenses we need to see how Jesus loved us even to the shedding of His blood.
So even if our eyes are filled with tears, may our hearts also be filled with love, and healed by love, may we share our rainbows of love with those whose eyes are filled with tears.