Eventide & Altar

John's disciples buried him and went and told Jesus. That sentence is easy to read past, but it is the whole shape of Christian grief. They did what the moment required. They washed the body and wrapped it and put it in the ground. And when that was done, they went to the one person who could receive what they were carrying.

You have probably done this more than once by now. Buried someone - a spouse, a friend, a sibling, a parent - and then had to figure out what to do with the weight of it. The going and telling Jesus is rarely dramatic. It is more often the quiet turn toward prayer in the days after, the Mass you attend while still hollow from the loss, the rosary decade said without feeling much. But the going is the thing. You go even when you don't know what you will say when you get there.

Jeremiah stood before the princes and said: as for me, I am in your hands. Do with me what you will. He did not know he would be protected. He just said the truth and placed himself in whatever came next. And what came next was Ahikam, who protected him. The protection was not guaranteed in advance. It came after the willingness to say the true thing and stand in the open.

August begins today under the Immaculate Heart of Mary. She is the one who went and told Jesus everything - the wine running out at Cana, the sword that Simeon said would pierce her, the thirty years of ordinary life in Nazareth that nobody wrote down. She brought all of it.

The Joyful Mysteries - the months before anyone knew what was coming. Mary going and telling Elizabeth. The child in the temple who was already about his Father's business. Pray them as the first prayer of August, under the heart that held everything and kept bringing it to her Son.

• In gratitude for everyone who has gone and told Jesus on our behalf - who carried our names in their prayers across years - we pray to the Lord.
• For those carrying fresh grief today, that they would find their way to the going and the telling even before they know what to say, we pray to the Lord.
• On the feast of Saint Alphonsus, for the mercy that is always available in the confessional - for all who have been afraid to go and have not yet gone, we pray to the Lord.

Name the thing you are carrying right now - the specific grief or worry or situation that does not have a clear resolution. Then do the small version of what John's disciples did: go and tell Jesus. One sentence is enough. Lord, this is what I am carrying. That is the whole prayer.