Meditation for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost – Luke 7:11-16
In his mission Jesus acted and taught, preached and healed, and confirmed his words with signs. Perhaps the most striking of Jesus’ works are his miracles, especially raising the dead: he raised Jairus’s daughter, the son of the widow of Nain, as we have just heard in the Gospel, and Lazarus, four days dead. In the miracle of the widow of Nain’s son, we see the human reality in its relationship with the world and with God.
The first element in the event is the presence of evil that torments man; here it appears in its final and ultimate form: death. Man lives in a world around him, in which he struggles for his existence and his well-being. Diseases, natural dangers and moral dangers from other people all keep man’s daily life under threat and attack.
The second element of the miracle is divine love: God intervenes to resolve these challenges and difficulties
that wear down human life. God intervenes in the laws of nature: here he removes an illness, there he saves from drowning, elsewhere he drives away want and feeds five thousand men with five loaves, and so on… And here he raises the widow of Nain’s son after the law of nature had sentenced him to death. God is the author of nature’s order and laws, and he alone can change them when he wills, out of love for man.
God’s miraculous intervention in human history is decisive proof of his care and love for people. Through his messengers he seeks to carry man’s difficulties with him and to repair the disorder that human sin has brought into people’s lives. Every miracle is a reminder that God walks with man step by step. A miracle is a billboard on which one clear sentence is written in large letters: “God is here”, “God is with us”, “God is among us”.
Seen this way, the raising of the widow of Nain’s son reminds us of God’s presence among us – not through messengers, but pointing to his own coming, the “Messiah”, among us. He is the Lord, as Luke calls him in this episode; it is the first time in his narrative that Luke gives Jesus this title. Raising this young man is a prelude to Jesus’ answer to the question of John’s disciples: “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” It proves that “he is the one who comes”, because the sick are healed “and the dead are raised”.
The raising of the widow of Nain’s son meant to the people of that time that “Christ the Lord is among us”, that Emmanuel, “God with us”, had come and was here now, at work. It is a sign not just of God’s intervention but of his very presence. It is a sign that we have truly entered the last times, when God himself will be in the midst of his people. The raising of this young man points not to God’s providence but to his direct presence! And this presence tests people’s response. The human response to the Lord’s presence cannot be neutral! Here the response was good: the Lord Jesus confronting death and overcoming it made them feel God’s “visitation” and his presence among them.
The Lord Jesus often refused to perform miracles, because he knew the response would not be the right one, and that a miracle then would not serve to remove the barrier between God and man: it would not contribute to reconciliation, would not lead people to repentance and turning to God, and would not make them answer God’s visitation with “yes”. That is why he refused Satan’s demand to throw himself from the pinnacle of the Temple or turn stones into bread. Nor did he grant a sign to that generation, which he called evil and adulterous because its intentions were bad; instead he said it would be given only the sign of the prophet Jonah, that is, his resurrection. Nor did he work miracles in his home town as he did in Capernaum, because they did not accept him as a prophet in his own country. And he did not satisfy Herod’s curiosity to see him perform miracles.
It is the human attitude that prevents God from intervening or allows him to. God sometimes intervenes through miracles, but he always intervenes in many and various ways. It is the human attitude that makes God’s presence among people effective or ineffective. Divine presence alone does not help: shutting God out is in fact killing him among us. God’s miracles are visible and invisible. Miraculous events are one face of God’s care for man and a clear expression of his desire to accompany our lives. But miracles are the outward sign of a great depth of love and divine plans for our good. The raising of the widow of Nain’s son sheds light on God’s question to us: do we feel God’s visitation? Does it mean anything to us that God is with us?
We must always, and now, as we read the Gospel, know that God is present among us and acting with us; and respond to his presence by crying out constantly: “A great prophet has arisen among us, and God has visited his people.”
This is the Lord’s time, this is the time of salvation. Amen.
Fr. Gerard Abi Saab
