05 June. Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
1st Reading: 1 Kings 17:17-24
Elijah restores the widow’s son to life
After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill; his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. She then said to Elijah, “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!”
But he said to her, “Give me your son.” He took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber where he was lodging, and laid him on his own bed. He cried out to the Lord, “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried out to the Lord, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.”
The Lord listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, and gave him to his mother; then Elijah said, “See, your son is alive.” So the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.”
2nd Reading: Galatians 1:11-19
The Gospel Paul preaches comes from a revelation of Jesus Christ
For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.
But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days; but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother.
Gospel: Luke 7:11-17
Jesus restores to life the only son of a widow at Nain
Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.
Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.
Receiving salvation
God’s initiative . In the story Jesus takes the initiative; the widow offers only her unspoken need. Jesus acts with such concern and sensitivity that the approach of God’s power, though it provokes awe, arouses also praise and faith. If this could be the manner of God’s approach to us always! Yet that is precisely Luke’s message. Jesus is the image of the Father, sharing in action the love of the Father for us. We only have to place our need of salvation before him. He approaches the spiritually needy as mercifully and with as much concern as the physically needy. Jesus sorrows for human wretchedness, and the only thing he cannot overcome is a refusal to acknowledge the need of God’s salvation.
Our realisation . Like the widow we must know that we are in need. We cannot save ourselves. “Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh” (Luke 6:21.) We must weep for our sins, for our indifference, our lack of perseverance in good intentions, our helplessness to heal the ills of the world around us. God is “visiting” us every day of our lives through Jesus, the risen Lord, coming close to us in love and concern. Jesus visits us especially in the Eucharist. We are called first to accept the gifts of life that he gives us, then to praise him joyfully for the gift. We do not have to be in the charismatic movement to do that.
Conversion . Some prefer to reject God’s approach or simply disbelieve in Him. Jesus weeps over Jerusalem in sorrow that its response is so poor (Luke 19:44.) Our lives are the poorer if we don’t realise that Jesus has the same love and concern for us that he showed for the widow of Nain (or Naim) and her son. That is a sort of conversion, of turning towards God, that we look for in the Mass. “Lord, come to me; visit me in your love and stay with me always.”
A Mother’s Tears
An ironical story attributed to Oscar Wilde takes up where today’s gospel ends. It goes something like this: A year later, Jesus came again to this village, Nain, accompanied by his disciples and a great number of people. When he was near the gate of the town he noticed that there was a woman sitting beside the road weeping. Immediately the Lord felt sorry for her and said, “Do not cry”. When the woman looked up and saw Jesus standing there she wept even more loudly. “What has happened to you, that you weep so bitterly?” Jesus asked the woman. “Because of you,” she answered. “I curse the day I met you when I was burying my only son and you brought him back to life; for now I wish he was dead again.”
“Why on earth do you say that?” Jesus asked the distressed woman, and she answered, “When my son came back to life, his fame spread throughout Judaea and all over the countryside. Many people came to admire him and show him homage as a famous man. Before, he had been a dutiful son to me. Now, he is foolishly proud and his head was turned and he has squandered all my savings on wastrels and harlots who fawned upon him, abandoning me here on the wayside with neither son or home.” When Jesus heard these words he was astonished and turning around to the crowd he said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found ingratitude like this.”
The moral, according to Oscar Wilde, was that nobody, not even God, should interfere in other peoples’ lives. Wilde’s theology fell far short of his undoubted literary skills. In the gospels there is no miracle which is futile, trivial or unwholesome. Nor are there miracles which inflict evil on anybody. The Lord’s miraculous intervention in our lives, albeit rare, is always benign. In the case of the bereaved widow, the gospel expressly mentions that “he felt sorry for her.” His motive was to heal her pain, not to replace it with another. The motive of this miracle was compassion: its message was God’s victory over death. All the miracles of Jesus are the prelude to his own resurrection, which was the decisive triumph of the power of God.
Personal and profound suffering would bring Oscar Wilde himself to a much deeper insight into the compassion of God. Falling from grace, the once literary lion of glittering London society became a social outcast, committed to Reading gaol for what was then deemed as scandalous immorality. In his prison cell, he began to wonder:
For who can say
by what strange way
Christ brings his will to light?
In the humiliation and desolation of his imprisonment, he came like the widow of Nain to experience the compassion of God. The Ballad of Reading Gaol has the lines:
Ah! happy they whose hearts can break and peace of pardon win.
How else may man make straight his plan and cleanse his soul from sin?
How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?
And he of the swollen purple throat and the stark and staring eyes,
Waits for the holy hands that took the Thief to Paradise;
And a broken and a contrite heart the Lord will not despise.
Suffering must be taken seriously
He doesn’t stop to think twice. He draws near to the hearse, stops the funeral and says to the dead boy: «Young man, I tell you: get up». When the youth gets up and starts to talk, Jesus «gave him to his mother» in order to stop her from crying. Once again they are together. The mother will no longer be alone.
It all seems so simple. The story doesn’t insist in the prodigious aspect of what Jesus just did. It invites the readers to see in him the revelation of God as Mystery of compassion and Force of life, able to save even from death. It is God’s compassion that makes Jesus so sensitive to the people’s suffering.
In the Church we need to recover compassion as soon as possible as the way of life proper for Jesus’ followers. We need to rescue it from a sentimental and moralizing conception that has discredited it. Compassion that demands justice is Jesus’ great command: «Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate».
This compassion is today more needed than ever. From power centers, everything is taken into account except the victims’ suffering. It functions as if there haven’t been wounded people or losers. From Jesus’ communities we should hear a cry of absolute indignation: the suffering of the innocent must be taken seriously; it’s not acceptable socially as something normal, since it’s unacceptable for God. God doesn’t want to see anyone crying. [J A Pagola]