It was timely to learn about so-called “cry spas” during Lent. That period of sadness and penitence ushered in Easter, when our tears are “turned into dancing,” as we’re told in song. The tricky part starts now, as our lives combine both seasons’ lessons, with no spa escapes guaranteed. Another song cautions us: “It won’t be long before it’s crying time.”

In mid-March, the New York Post reported on Anthony Villotti, who has started opening pop-up locations where customers pay $20 to book a private room for 30 minutes of crying time before rushing back to the office.

Luxury Lamentations?

“I was surprisingly happy to be sad for the moment,” wrote Asia Grace regarding her visit to a recent setting for the “Sob Parlour” experience. Her Post commentary noted that Villotti, 31, had come up with the idea of providing “swank and secure” settings where New York City denizens  could pursue moments of respite and healing.

Each of the private rooms, typically set up in such venues as community centers or art galleries, provides facial tissues, a journal for jotting notes, optional playlists of music, and a few other amenities while a person summons up evocative thoughts.

Lent brings us emotive Gospel texts of Jesus’ passion and death, rites for the Stations of the Cross, and opportunities for adoration and confession, when many Catholics and other Christians shed tears together.

Easter arrives, and we’re ready to shout “alleluia” about the happiness and hope found in the Resurrection.

But we must admit that the spigot of tears can be reopened at any time. Our culture and serious challenges facing our world have made mental or spiritual distress more common. Indeed, we witness pain and grief in people all around us, including the poor and homeless. Those with the eyes to see also sense melancholy in the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

We can be deeply moved by various feelings, including personal sorrow, empathetic sadness, depression, frustration, remorse, anger, and bliss.

Still, the act of crying may be difficult or awkward—for women being judged in the workplace or other social situations, as well as for self-conscious men who try to “tough it out.”

Reservations on the Red-Eye

“Girls and boys cry about the same amount of times until they reach the age of 12,” says Psychology Today, citing researcher William Frey. “By the time they are 18, women cry on average four times more than men. That is about 5.3 cries a month, compared to a man’s 1.4 times per month.”

Overall, 85 percent of women and 73 percent of men say they feel better after crying. One key reason is the removal of toxins from the body, according to Frey. But who knows the whole explanation? Another Psychology Today article acknowledges that “why humans cry is still a mystery in many ways.”

Perhaps the most telling takeaway from the magazine’s team-coverage of teardrops is this analysis from neuropsychologist Jodi DeLuca: “When you cry, it’s a signal you need to address something.”

Pope Francis would agree with that sense of urgency. One of his recently published books, an English translation of A Good Life: 15 Essential Habits for Living with Hope and Joy, includes this section headline, “Those Who Do Not Know How to Cry Are Not Good Christians.”

It is said that Francis embraces a “theology of tears.” With loving intent, he wants to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

In encountering the anguish of others, “temporal compassion is completely useless!” the Pontiff says in his book. “That kind of compassion has us, at the very most, reaching into our pockets and extracting a few coins. If Christ had had that kind of compassion, He would have cured three or four people and then returned to the Heavenly Father.

“It was when Christ wept—and how He wept!—that He understood our troubles. The world today needs us to weep! The marginalized weep, the scorned weep, but those of us who lead a relatively comfortable life do not know how to weep. These are truths we can see only with eyes that have been cleansed by tears.”

Francis advises that we weep when we see a hungry or mistreated child. “This is your challenge,” he says. “Be brave—do not be afraid to cry!”

Cry of the People

Spiritually speaking, we can ease our fear of tears by seeing that Easter helps the somberness of Lent make sense. We receive God’s great promise of redemption, and we can pass that gift around like a candle. The light that pierces the darkness of evil is a gift of courage—and also a gift of tears because we still see the world’s many shadows.

Our capacity to mourn can “open one’s eyes to life and to the sacred and irreplaceable value of each person,” the Pope said in a 2020 General Audience as Lent approached. “Understanding sin is a gift from God…. It is a gift we must ask for.” He quoted St. Ephrem: “A face washed with tears is unspeakably beautiful.”

Mystical writers in the Catholic tradition have recognized that the Holy Spirit sometimes imparts a “gift of tears” to a person as part of a deep experience of God’s encouragement and comfort, not the result of any earthly emotion.

A blessing attributed to followers of St. Francis of Assisi, who was known to cry copiously, suggests these awakenings shouldn’t be hidden under a pillow:

“May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.”

A compelling Jewish Learning Institute video features an elderly rabbi who experienced the horror of the Holocaust telling a story about the power of tears—and how it can spread.

When World War II had ended and an orphanage-school opened in France to care for children and young adults who had lost their parents in the concentration camps, a group of benefactors visited the site one day in 1945 to give welcoming speeches.

The orphans in the audience, which included this rabbi telling the story, refused to applaud or even look up at those sponsors, whom they considered pretentious strangers. The children stoically had taught themselves, after seeing their families killed, never to show any emotion, largely in resentment toward their captors.

The last speaker to rise, Mr. Liebovich, was introduced as an Auschwitz survivor who likewise had lost his family. “Spontaneously, with no word, 220 heads were lifted up with sympathy and solidarity,” the rabbi recounted. Liebovich was struck by the children’s sudden attention and the first sight of their faces.

Holding the microphone with trembling hands, he said only, “Dear children,” and began to cry profusely. The rabbi recalled, “Every one of us on the grass felt that his cheeks became wet with our own tears…. We all started to cry loudly—free, loud, maybe five minutes—a valley of tears was there.”

One of the oldest orphans then rose to speak and thanked the assembly for one gift—“the ability to cry.” The rabbi continued relaying this 18-year-old’s remarks: Ever since they killed my father before my eyes, he said, I haven’t shed a tear, much less “smiling or laughing.” After my liberation to the orphanage, I haven’t slept one night, asking myself, “What will be my future? If I cannot cry, cannot smile, I have no emotions … I have a stone in my chest.

“So who will marry me, bless me with a family, if I am not a human being? Five minutes ago, when Mr. Liebovich came, I felt for the first time that I am a mensch. And I know the secret: The one who can cry today has a chance to smile tomorrow.”

Public Displays of Affliction

That story has a fresh impact in 2024. So many of us lack a healthy relationship with ourselves and our feelings, as well as other people, and God. Our culture of hardened hearts, “toughing it out” with mostly negative emotions, begs for a readiness to shed tears. Those droplets are subjective, but they are links to objective truths.  

One might say, especially after instruction by two liturgical seasons, that we can’t address society’s rampant assaults on reality and reasoning—our performative ethics, our narcissistic indifference, our sloppy logic, our divisive groupthink—without hearts that have learned to care.

The baring and sharing of right-minded emotions is a healing point of connection for all the meaningful relationships we seek.

Think about those pop-up Sob Parlours. Anthony Villotti has a good concept—allowing folks to find safe spaces for deep reflection in the middle of the day. Asia Grace, who was “surprisingly happy to be sad for the moment,” echoes the New York City rhythm that keeps step with urban swagger while also demanding reality checks for oneself and others.

It’s reported that Villotti plans to make the pop-ups a monthly routine, and they may thrive.

Perhaps we should worry about this popularity as an alarm signaling Americans’ inner disrepair. Perhaps we should feel cognitive dissonance about relatively posh rooms as settings for the teardrops we normally associate with sacrifice.

Those issues won’t paralyze us if we consider that, in important ways, our tears have been turned into dancing. Spiritual shalom and earthly sadness, the upbeats and downbeats of everyday life, can coexist. Of course, these combinations, which reflect solidarity and resilience in the populace, will require more sacrifice within a secularized, scatter-brained culture.

Here’s a bigger concern—people desiring to do their crying solo. The preference for privacy is understandable, but the “gift of tears” can’t bear the best fruit when it occurs in a private room. Ideally, we build relationships by using our voices (and our eyes) to peaceably speak truth with others.

Pope Francis is promoting public displays of affliction. For some people, the best Parlour might be a large lounge, or a living room, or shelter, where we can comfort each other. EWTN media foundress Mother Angelica might have suggested group-watching the television news, so we can discuss the tragedy of this event or the injustice of that situation, followed by prayer and action.

We also need to ponder what happens when we leave the “cry spa.” Are we in our own comfortable world, feeling better in a selfish way? When we pass a homeless drug addict on the sidewalk, have we found an inner restfulness that allows us to stop, interact, and offer accompaniment?

We should remember that people on the margins, like the concentration camp orphans, may be wrongly deadening their emotions, yearning for an ear to hear them and a tear to free them. Our Judeo-Christian culture must maximize human beings’ freedom to seek fulfillment together. The Bible says the poor will always be with us, and that means we must pursue solidarity continuously; we must be attentive when souls fall silent.

The courage to offer life-giving emotions to others, as Pope Francis reminds us, must come from a relationship with God—with the Christ who gives consolation through faith and reason although his heart has been broken. This is the model for all authentic relationships which strive to keep balancing and elevating our bonds.

Lent has ended, helping us appreciate the mandate to review and renew our own hearts. Easter Sunday has ended (although the season continues), buoying us with a redeemer whose way, truth, and life can be passed along confidently, with sense and sensibility.

Now, throughout the year, whenever “crying time” is coming, whether we’re in a comfortable spa, at home with the family, or on the streets encountering one of God’s children in pain, the galvanizing insight of Jodi DeLuca sharpens our blurred vision: “We need to address something.”

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