The raising of the widow’s son

Today’s gospel reading is the Raising of the Widow’s Son. This is a story about the compassion of our Lord Jesus Christ, as he was in the City of Nain, which is some distance south of his hometown of Nazareth, when he came across a funeral procession and can find the rest of this gospel story in your Bible on Luke 7:11-17.

“11 [Jesus] journeyed to a city called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd accompanied him. 12 As he drew near to the gate of the city, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. A large crowd from the city was with her.

13 When the Lord saw her, he was moved with pity for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” 14 He stepped forward and touched the coffin; at this the bearers halted, and he said, “Young man, I tell you, arise! 15 The dead man sat up and began to speak and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16 Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, exclaiming, “A great prophet has arisen in our midst,” and “God has visited his people.” 17 This report about him spread through the whole of Judea and in all the surrounding region.”

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For those who do not yet know our Lord Jesus Christ, they might ask the question, “Why did our Lord Jesus Christ take pity on the woman? He could just have let the funeral procession by and they would have buried the young man anyway.” Perhaps this incident was one way that our Lord Jesus wanted to teach his disciples, that he was the Resurrection and the Life. Above all, he knew that the poor widowed woman who lost her only son would now become an outcast of society with no one to care for her. This is why our Lord took pity on this widow and told her, “Do not weep.”

This story clearly tells us that the young man was placed inside a coffin, yet the Lord touched his coffin, which to the Jews at that time, meant that his body would be defiled or uncleansed and he can’t do Jewish rituals in the Temple. Yet, our Lord defied all this and told the dead man to arise. And the young man sat up and started to speak.

If you were one of the mourners, what would you have said about what our Lord Jesus Christ did? For sure the people in this story were all struck with fear of the Lord and then they glorified God because they believed that our Lord Jesus was a prophet who did these wondrous things. Clearly, the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ would turn your grief into joy.

But why did these people say that Jesus was a prophet? You can find the reason in today’s First Reading which you can find in 1 Kings 17: 17-24 which is the story of Elijah who stayed in a house where the woman’s son also died. Elijah then took the dead boy from his mother’s lap and brought him to the upper room and laid him on his bed. There, Elijah stretched his arms and prayed “Lord, my God will you afflict even the widow with whom I am staying by killing her son?”

God heard the prayer of Elijah and the boy’s breath returned. He then took the boy down and “gave him to his mother.” Notice the startling similarity in the First Reading and the Gospel today, wherein our Lord Jesus upon giving life to the dead, also “gave him to his mother.” But apparently the similarities end there.

While the people in the funeral procession were struck with fear and thought that our Lord Jesus Christ was a prophet who rose from within their midst. But in the story of Elijah, which the Jews know too well, Elijah took the dead child to the upper room and stretched his arms and performed a ritual and prayed to God to restore the life of the boy.

But if you read again today’s gospel, you will notice that our Lord Jesus Christ only held the coffin, perhaps to stop the funeral procession. But he didn’t have to stretch his arms and pray to God to restore the life of the child. He did it entirely on his own. After all, Jesus is God and he showed the people accompanying the funeral procession that only God has the power to give life. Yet, those people could only see in our Lord that he was a prophet. Perhaps this was due to the fact that no one believed that God would be walking on their midst.

Some 2,000 years later after the raising of the widow’s son, our Lord Jesus Christ still shows us his compassion by giving us St. FaustinaKowalska who wrote the diary of the Divine Mercy. Praying the Divine Mercy prayer at 3 o’clock has become a daily habit of many people. Most AM and FM radio now play the 3 o’clock prayer everyday. Even if you prayed it once, our Lord Jesus Christ practically guarantees your salvation as he will come as a just judge. So if our Lord Jesus Christ could resurrect the dead young man, we too will experience life after death… if we obey God’s commandments.

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