St. Augustine and Shuri: Sorrow Over the Death of Our Loved Ones

Each year, the Catholic Church celebrates Hallowtide in autumn. This triduum of feast days includes All Hallow’s Eve (Halloween), All Saints’ Day (a holy day of obligation), and All Souls’ Day.

These are days on the liturgical calendar that call to mind our mortality, the joy of the Church Triumphant, and the need to pray for the faithful departed. Together, they kickstart the month of November, the month dedicated to the poor souls in Purgatory.

The idea of life after death is not exclusively Christian. Just like the human longing for worship, humanity’s collective consciousness has, in numerous places and among different peoples, developed beliefs on the hereafter.

What does make Christianity different from many of the pagan religions is that it sees merit – and a real need – to pray for the deceased.

The Catholic tradition of praying for the dead can be traced straight back to Scripture. And so can our hope in God’s mercy in judgment. That’s why we pray for our loved ones and all the holy souls in Purgatory.

Suffering the Loss of a Loved One

This hope we have of our family and friends resting in God’s eternal peace and heavenly glory does not mean our emotions remain unaffected. Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Mt. 5:4). Yes, but while we’re mourning, it’s likely we feel less than blessed.

Sorrow and grief, as C.S. Lewis noted after the death of his wife Joy, are painful and hard to shake. The emotions that rage when someone we care about dies are felt by all people who experience such a loss.

St. Augustine, in his Confessions, laments such sufferings. Let’s look at two deaths that devastated the saint and how he reacted to them. Then, we’ll compare these with the deaths of Shuri’s brother and mother in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

The Death of a Friend (a Brother)

A very close friend of Augustine’s grew sick. The future saint writes, “As a boy he had grown up with me; we had gone to school together and played together.” He’s really like a brother to young Augustine. Eventually, his friend is on the point of death.

At this point in his life, Augustine belonged to the cult of the Manichees. Manicheism held spiritual beliefs such as the existence of two gods. These gods were equal in power, one good and one evil, locked in perpetual combat.

When his dying and unconscious friend was baptized in the Name of the one true God, Augustine thought it was hardly significant and that, if he came to, his friend would continue believing the same things he did. It turned out he was wrong; his friend was upset that he made fun of his baptism.

Augustine scoffed at Christian ritual, even the very sacrament that brings a person into God’s family.

Not long after, the friend died. At the time, it struck Augustine to the core and filled him with disgust and fear of death, which he saw as being “ready to devour all human beings.”

He mourned his friend and was deeply wounded. He writes: “Within me I was carrying a tattered, bleeding soul that did not want me to carry it, yet I could find no place to lay it down.” Life becomes empty, sour.

Only in hindsight and in the light of his Christian faith does Augustine readily admit to God that He can heal these afflictions. We can find similar consolation that all souls are dear to God.

We can trust in the perfect love of the One who conquered sin and death. This instance in Augustine’s faith journey bears some similarities to the experience Shuri has when her brother T’Challa dies in Wakanda Forever.

Like Augustine and his childhood friend, Shuri grew up with her sibling, played with him as a kid, and laughed with him. Like Augustine’s friend, near the end, T’Challa – the Black Panther – is suffering from health complications and eventually dies.

Science and the self, what Shuri had placed so much of her trust on, were unable to save her brother’s earthly life.

She too, when her mother Queen Ramonda suggests the traditional mourning ritual, is unenthusiastic about the idea. But, like Augustine, she has a conversion of heart later in the movie.

The Death of a Mother

Perhaps the most distressing death that Augustine describes in The Confessions is that of his own mother, St. Monica. When she dies, Augustine at first shuns the idea of mourning.

Now a practicing Christian, he thought that lamenting her death was inappropriate since she would have life in Christ. But his emotions well up and burst out in streams!

He recalls to God: I found comfort in weeping before you about her and for her, about myself and for myself.

“The tears that I had been holding back I now released to flow as plentifully as they would, and strewed them as a bed beneath my heart.” Augustine finds it difficult to find fault in this act of sorrow over his mother. He even says that if his readers should find fault with it, they would do well to pray for him.

Mourning our loved ones is natural since death is unnatural.

What is more, Augustine finds solace in his faith in the living God. Compare this now with Shuri’s reaction to her own mother’s death.

It brakes her. She has lost her father, brother, and mother. Her family is gone; her life feels void. Yet, she wins the day, even showing mercy to the sadistic Namor, who killed her mother.

But this does not bring closure. It doesn’t bring peace.

This is something Shuri seeks out at the end of the film. Specifically, in the post-credit scene, she burns her white funeral robes. In Wakandan culture, burning the funeral garments is believed to end the grieving period over a deceased loved one. Here Shuri is finalizing her grieving for both her brother T’Challa and her mother Ramonda.

Like St. Augustine, Shuri – who had scoffed at tradition for the majority of the two Black Panther movies – has embraced her people’s religious traditions. She cries over the loss of her loved ones as did the author of The Confessions.

A Place without Pain

These examples of mourning – one set from the life of a saint and one set from a fictional blockbuster movie – illustrate how human beings find consolation in religion. But familiar rituals are meant to be more than a method of psychological soothing.

For Catholics, if our faith is real, we believe that what we do has merit and can bring peace to us the living and to the deceased as well.

Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” This is one of the beatitudes, and the rewards for many of the beatitudes, Jesus makes clear, will be heavenly rewards.

But even here in our earthly life we’re involved in a relationship with God: the Mass, the sacraments, our own personal prayers. And these should give us some consolation and peace in this life. Then in Heaven we will experience the fullness of consolation and peace because our relationship with God will be perfect.

Nothing will separate us from Him, and we will be filled with continual joy.

There, as the Book of Revelation says, “[God] will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4).

Even death will pass away. Our vale of tears will give way to a land flowing with all good things. This is the hope, the reality, of all who sleep in Christ.