As a Gentile and a healer, St. Luke
especially highlighted our Lord’s mercy for people who were considered
outsiders or unimportant, who suffered profound difficulties and challenges in
their lives. Whether it is the shepherds who received word of Christ’s birth
from the angels, the Theotokos who responded with complete obedience to the
message of the Archangel Gabriel about the miraculous conception of the Savior,
or the poor, hungry, and thirsty who would be blessed in the Kingdom of
God, St. Luke’s gospel gives particular
stress to how those considered weak in that time and place found great blessing
and strength in Jesus Christ.
Today’s gospel reading from St. Luke
about the Lord’s raising of the son of the widow of Nain proclaims powerfully
Christ’s mercy for the lowly and suffering, for He has compassion upon a widow
who mourns the death of her only son. He
comforts her, saying “Do not weep,” and then touches the coffin, bringing the
young man back from the dead.
The Lord’s great act of compassion
for this woman is a sign of our salvation.
For we weep and mourn not only for loved ones whom we see no more, but
also for the broken, disintegrated state of life that the sins of humanity—and
our own sins—have brought to us and to our world. Death, destruction, hatred, fear, and decay
in all their forms are the consequences of our refusal to live faithfully as
those created in the image of God. We
have worshipped ourselves, our possessions and our pride, and found despair and
emptiness as a result, as well as slavery to our own self-centered
desires. So we weep with the widow of
Nain for losing loved ones and for losing ourselves.
In that time and place, a widow who
lost her only son was in deep trouble.
She would have no one to provide for her or to protect her. Poverty, neglect, and abuse would be real
threats to her very life. Who knows what
would have become of her as a result?
When the Lord raised her son, He not only demonstrated that He is the
conqueror of death, but also of our separation from one another. In raising her son, Christ restored both his
life and hers.
The good news of the Gospel, of
course, is the compassion of God that extends even to the most miserable and
vulnerable human being. Rather than
simply observing human suffering and letting us bear the consequences of our
actions, the Father sent the Son to enter into our suffering, into our
distorted and disintegrated world, in order to set us right, to stop us from
weeping, and even to raise us from the dead into the glory of the heavenly
kingdom. The Saviour touched the coffin
of the dead man and he arose. Christ’s
compassion for us is so profound that He also entered a coffin, a tomb, and
even descended to Hades, the shadowy place of the dead because—out of love for
humankind—He could not simply stand by and allow us to destroy ourselves by
bearing the full consequences of our actions.
Contrary to what some may teach, Christian faith
is not fundamentally about justice or punishment or wrath for sinners. It is instead about the infinite and holy
love of Christ Who will stop at nothing to bring the one lost sheep back into
the fold, Who is not embarrassed to welcome home the prodigal son, and Who will
even submit to death on a cross in order to destroy death by His glorious
resurrection.
St. Paul learned
something about Christ’s compassion through his many sufferings. He barely escaped Damascus with his life,
endured beatings, imprisonment and other calamities, and had a “thorn in the
flesh” of some kind that the Lord would not remove from him. Instead, He gave him the word: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My
power is made perfect in weakness.” St. Paul accepted that, saying “I will all
the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon
me.”
Many of us do not have to look very
hard to find our own “thorns in the flesh” or how our lives bear some
similarity to the difficult plight of the widow of Nain. When that is the situation with us, we must
take St. Paul as our example. Instead of
abandoning his ministry and holding his problems against God or thinking that
he could handle everything by himself, he used his weakness to grow in his
awareness of Christ’s power, comfort, and compassion.
As St. Luke emphasized so clearly,
our Lord’s salvation is not a reward for having a life with no
difficulties. Indeed, it was often those
who had suffered disease, loss, poverty, and rejection who were most open to
the good news of Christ during His earthly ministry. Surely, it was their humility that opened
their hearts and souls to Him. Those who
think that they have it all in life can easily convince themselves that all is
well. If they want a religion, it is often one that congratulates them for
their accomplishments and never gets beyond worldly ways of thinking. But those who are aware of their weaknesses,
of their failings and their inability to fix all their problems, know that they
need help from One Whose compassion is deeper than merely helping those who
help themselves. They need a Savior Who
conquers even death itself, Who turns the ultimate weakness of the grave into
the triumph of an empty tomb, and Who is not ashamed to remember even the most
wretched repentant sinner in His Kingdom.
When our spiritual eyes are opened
to see that that is how we all stand before Christ, we will give up trying to
impress Him with how religious we are or judging others for not measuring
up. In fact, we will no longer focus on
ourselves at all, but instead we will be transformed such that we extend His
compassion to others. Think for a moment
about the widow of Nain and her son.
Surely, they were so profoundly grateful for the Lord’s mercy that they
lived the rest of their days showing that same mercy to others. It would be impossible for someone to go
through an experience like that and think that they had achieved it all by
their own ability. No, their life was
entirely God’s gift. In their weakness,
they received Christ’s strength, which is precisely the strength of God’s
eternal compassion. If we receive it, if
we receive Him, then we must live accordingly, showing the same mercy to our
suffering neighbors that we have received ourselves.
The ministry of Jesus Christ
continues to this day through His Body, the Church. In our personal and
collective weaknesses, we all have the opportunity to open ourselves to the
compassionate strength of our Lord. In
keeping with how our patron St. Luke told the good news of Christ’s ministry,
this parish embodies compassion toward people who know that life in our corrupt
world is not easy. Many of us can
identify with the shepherds, the poor, the sick, and the bereaved who so
powerfully received the mercy of the Lord.
Like them, let us take up our place in extending that same blessing to
others. For Christ’s Body continues to do
Christ’s work, His ministry of binding up the wounds of His sick children,
conquering death, and inviting them to the life of a Kingdom where the last really
shall be first.