Glory to Jesus Christ!
It’s hard NOT to take life for granted! Every day the sun rises. Every day we awake, get dressed, go to work or to church. Every day we eat meals, some of us browse the Internet, some read magazines. All of these things are part of “everyday life,” and we seldom stop to consider what would happen if (or when) something removes them from us.
These days the news brings it all a little closer to home as we ponder the plight of our brothers and sisters in the southeast who have lost everything to Helene. I heard an interview today of a man who drove nearly 6 hours from his home in North Carolina to a destination in South Carolina where he could buy the necessities to just keep on living—food, water, fuel.
Thank God it’s still warm, otherwise these unfortunates would be freezing as well!
Although percentage-wise the number of fatalities was small, it was large for any ‘storm’! When it’s all said and done, over 200 will be dead, their families impacted forever, some unable to wash from their memories the terrible visions of seeing their loved one washed away before their very eyes in the raging waters of the storm.
We can’t bring them back. Much as we’d like to, we don’t have that kind of authority over life and death.
But we serve One Who does have such authority. And in being such a servant, we must live in that hope, and we must share that hope with others who we know are feeling quite hopeless right now.
In today’s Gospel, the widow of Nain had lost all hope. She lives as an old woman. In Jewish society in that time, women didn’t “earn a living” - they were provided for by their husbands. If they were widowed, they relied upon male children to provide for them, or they would be destitute.
For the woman in today’s Gospel, she IS a widow. She HAD only one son. Now, he has died.
And so she walks with a funeral procession from the town of Nain out to a destination where she will lay the dead body of her only hope in this world into the ground.
She feels the grips of hopelessness tear her from the world she knew.
But our Lord knows all of this. As always, He is at the right place at the right time. As far as we know, neither the young man nor his mother ever expressed any faith in Jesus. It doesn’t matter. God can do as He wills!
And on this day, He wills to restore life, to give the gift of life. He does so with His Word. Young man, I say to you, arise!
Do we understand the power of those words? They’ve been uttered before by our Lord. At the home of Jairus, Jesus gives the gift of life to a little girl by saying, Little girl, I say to you, arise! At the tomb of His friend Lazarus He speaks, Lazarus, come forth!
We don’t know if there were other instances of such raisings. We know from the Gospel of St. Luke that disciples of St. John the Forerunner were present to see today’s raising. St. Luke records that they returned to John and told him what they witnessed. John in turn sent them back to Jesus with a question: ‘Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?’
John didn’t give them this question because HE needed the answer. He sent them knowing that he would be murdered, and this was his way of securing his own disciples to their new Master. In His response, Jesus says to them, Tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor receive the Gospel.
With the first of these, the Lord blesses those who are suffering in this world. With the proclamation about the dead, they receive the gift of life still in this world. With the Gospel, all of us, then, now, and until He returns, are granted the gift of life for eternity—if only we follow where He is leading us.
You see, the gift of life isn’t just for the physically dead—it’s mostly for the spiritually dead. Let us embrace the gift before it’s too late.
Glory forever!
