Life is a Gift (10th Sunday Ordinary C)

Years ago as a seminarian, I used to visit a sickly widow who was taken care of by her only son.  I would read her the Sunday Gospel, share with her my reflections, listen to hers too, and give her the communion for the sick. One Sunday morning, after a short Christmas break, I went to visit her. To my bewilderment, she wept vigorously on her chair as she saw me came.  Her neighbor, who was taking care of her that day, informed me that her only son died in an accident during the Christmas season. I was shocked and dumbfounded. How could this thing happen to her? I could only sit in silence beside the grieving widow wishing I had the power to bring back her son.  My heart was moved with pity but I felt my own helplessness too. I just kept on visiting her every Sunday until she overcame her grief and wept no more.

Today’s gospel reading (Lk 7:11-17) tells of a similar situation in the city of Nain where the Lord encountered a widow whose son died.  The Lord was moved with pity.  He revived the dead to life and gave him back to his mother. The first reading too (1 Kgs 17:17-24) is a parallel story: the Prophet Elijah called out to God in order to bring back the life of the son of the widow in whose house the Prophet was staying. And God did bring back the life of the child.

Allow me to dwell on the gospel reading (Lk 7:11-17) and bring out three things for our reflection:

“Do not weep.”  The Lord, in his compassion, could not stand the grief of the mother who was a widow.  As a widow, she was already poor for there were no job opportunities for women then.  Losing the only son, would make her the poorest of the poor having no social security system to lean on.  The widow could only weep because of her pitiful plight, losing her husband and now her only son. With the death of her son, she just actually lost everything.  The Lord sees the grief of the poor widow and with compassion told her, “Do not weep” (v. 13).

It is helpful to note that in this incident the initiative came from the Lord. The widow was not begging or asking him to bring back her son. She was just lost in her grief weeping. Unlike other but similar incidents, this one did not mention about the faith of the widow as requirement to God’s grace. This allows us to see the initiative and gratuitousness of God’s merciful and compassionate acts.  Somehow, this assures us that God sees, even before we formulate and articulate our prayers, the intense yearning of our hearts, the longing to be freed from our deepest grief and sufferings.  This is the prayer of the heart.  God sees through our hearts and acts out of his compassion.  Haven’t we experienced God’s gracious interventions in our lives even if we feel undeserving of his grace?

“I tell you, arise!” Jesus commanded the dead man to rise! The young man sat up and began to speak. Jesus gave him to his mother (vv. 14-15). What Jesus did was resuscitation of the earthly life and not yet the resurrection of the dead.  But this event certainly foreshadowed the definitive victory of life over death in Jesus’ resurrection through which He won for us the gift of eternal life.

Life is a precious gift.  God is its author. Only God gives life.  We ought to be grateful for our lives. In the spirit of gratitude, we ought to protect and celebrate life. We need to be wary of the misleading secular philosophies that views life as liability rather than as gift and resource. We need to overcome the “culture of death” that is conspiring against life, espousing measures that both oppress and suppress life in favor of economic gains and maintenance of the concentration of wealth among the powerful and the rich. Life is of the highest value; all social systems ought to be at the service of life, not the other way around.

“And they glorified God.” When life was brought back, both in the incidents involving the prophet Elijah and Jesus Christ, God’s power was acknowledged. In the first reading, the mother, upon seeing that her son was brought back to life through the prayers of Elijah, acknowledged that indeed Elijah was a man of God and was speaking of God’s word (1 Kgs 17: 24). In the gospel reading, all who witnessed the revival of the dead man’s life, glorified God exclaiming that “God has visited his people” (Lk 7:16).

God’s power is felt wherever and whenever death is overcome and life triumphs. He is the sole author of life and no one else.  We all died because of sin. But God in his compassion and great mercy gratuitously endows us with the gift of life and, in Jesus’ resurrection, has overcome death and has assured us of eternal life.  Indeed, we are a people who have seen the visitation of God; we have experienced God’s compassion and love.  Let us then be the people who glorify God—the God who hears with compassion the prayer of our hearts and tells us to stop weeping because death is no more; what He gives us is life as a precious gift.