Date of Award
7-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Publisher
Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2025
Degree Name
Master of Theology (Th.M)
Director
Julie Hanlon Rubio
Abstract
This thesis argues that communal lament is a Christologically grounded, ethically formative, and contextually engaged practice for Christian communities, offering a faithful response to the inescapable reality of suffering and trauma. In a world marked by personal, communal, and ecological wounds, communal lament enables Christian communities to acknowledge suffering and express their pain truthfully. Through lament, we affirm the God who hears and remembers, resist injustice courageously, and fosters imaginative practices of peace and reconciliation. Communal lament is thus not a surrender to despair but a profound declaration of hope.
Far more than simply an element of worship ritual, communal lament is a distinctive mode of Christian existence. Through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates Christian theology, ethics, trauma theory, and memory studies, this thesis illuminates how communal lament constitutes a vital and faithful Christian response to suffering in a broken world. The methodological framework for this study utilizes a triadic approach grounded in Christology, ethics, and social-political context. This thesis analyzes the biblical and theological foundations of communal lament, both in the Old and New Testament, to demonstrate that lament is not merely an emotional outlet or a poetic form, but a faithful, embodied response to suffering rooted in the relationship between God and God‘s people. Therefore, Christian theology must respond to suffering through faithful, embodied solidarity.
Finally this thesis shows how communal lament functions as a morally transformative practice within Christian communities. Framed by the triadic lens of memory, justice, and hope, communal lament resists amnesia by preserving dangerous memory, names injustice, empowers the victims to claim their agency, and endeavors for justice through truthful remembrance and the sustained work of confronting the causes of suffering. It also sustains cruciform hope—grounded in Christ‘s resurrection and the ―already–not yet‖ reality of the reign of God‘s kingdom—which orients the community toward a holistic vision of life: one marked not only by pervasive suffering, but also by joy, healing, and the ongoing possibility of renewal.
Recommended Citation
Long, Jiaoli, "Solidarity Embodied: Communal Lament as a Way of Being Christian" (2025). Jesuit School of Theology Dissertations. 186.
https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/jst_dissertations/186
