15th Sunday after Pentecost 24.8.08 God comforts us in suffering
The Lord has compassion on the widow, the main motive for His miracle. He extends that compassion to us as well. He shows both how much He loves and how much power He has. Power and Love make a great combination.
He is not working a miracle just for that particular family. It is a sign for all of us that He has come for precisely that purpose... that the blind may see, the lame may walk, the dead may live.
He is Life Himself and gives life to others like a rich man throwing coins as He walks along.
Life is His signature, we might say. Wherever He goes He leaves a trail of life.
Giving life in general He also gives the particular aspect of life that we need at any given point... food if we are hungry, sight if we are blind, forgiveness if we are in sin etc.
And if we are in grief or sadness He will give consolation and joy.
Sometimes His help is obvious and dramatic, but not all the time. He does not normally bring the dead back to life as in this case. We understand that they come back to life in a different way, and much better than coming back to this earth. We would not wish our loved ones back here if they have reached heaven. It would be cruel to pull someone out of heaven and put them back here just to keep us company!
In this case our consolation is the hope/belief that the person concerned has gone to a better place, and we express our love for that person by unremitting prayer and penance.
Separation is painful but reunion in a better state is more than compensation.
The Scriptures tell us that God wipes away our tears. There are countless passages that make this point. (eg He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more;mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’Rev 21,1-6)
He will do so, either immediately as in today’s Gospel, or over the longer term gradually restore everything to how it should be.
He came to give life and life to the full. So, He does that. Sometimes it takes time, as in bringing people to resurrection and eternal life, but it is happening. Always He is acting for good on our behalf, and our prayers and sacrifices will accelerate that process.
So we bring Him all our griefs, sorrows, and hurts. The Church is like a hospital. Plaster, slings, crutches. We are hurt, sad, suffering. We take so many knocks and we want consolation. It will come. Did He not say He was like a doctor, coming for the sick?
It is important not to exacerbate each other’s pain by any unkindness. We are all in same boat and the boat often appears to be sinking. We need therefore to be sensitive to each other.
The people in the waiting room don’t fight and kick and punch. Nor in the Church.
It is OK to be sad sometimes. It is sometimes said that Christians should never look gloomy. Certainly we could be a lot happier if we had more faith. Nevertheless we cannot always be dancing in the street, not just yet. There are still too many disorders in the world for that.
We live the Cross as well as the Resurrection. Our Lord himself was not in a state of bliss on the Cross.
So we can acknowledge we are unhappy and we cannot be totally free from it in this life, this valley of tears, valley of darkness, this exile, this tent waiting to be folded up. We do not expect total bliss here; we just need enough consolation to keep us going. The bliss will be uninterrupted later.
The Lord, the giver of life, will carry us through until that point.
