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The readings we are given by Holy Mother Church, repeated year in, year out, have contexts. When you begin, perhaps on Thursday or Friday, to prepare your participation at Sunday Mass, preview the readings and orations so that you can actively receive them as they are pronounced or sung. Look at the surrounding contexts of the Epistle and the Gospel. Context can enrich you even more when at Mass you hear the readings as they are raised to God.
First, let’s see our Gospel reading for this 15th Sunday after Pentecost. Our pericope from Luke 7 ends just before we hear that the disciples of the imprisoned John the Baptist have told John what happened. John redirects them back to Christ with the question, “Are you he who is to come?”
Again, after the part we hear this Sunday, Christ didn’t answer John’s question with a direct “Yes”. Instead, He instructs John’s messengers to return and tell His Precursor that, “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them” (Luke 7:22).
“The dead are raised up” (cf. Luke 7:15). This, indeed, is in this Sunday’s reading, which is:
At that time, Jesus went to a city called Na′in, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. As he drew near to the gate of the city, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and a large crowd from the city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” And he came and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” And the dead man sat up, and began to speak. And he gave him to his mother. Fear seized them all; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and “God has visited his people!”
We know where we are in the liturgical year. In the ancient Roman Church we would have concluded today the Sundays connected to the Feast of St. Lawrence. Next week we moved into those grouped around St. Cyprian. It was their way of dividing up the time after Pentecost. Pius Parsch describes this Sunday as our shift toward “harvest time” and a turn toward reflection of the Parousia, Christ’s Second Coming.
Where are we in the Gospel geographically? For this we must go to the section of chapter 7 before this Sunday’s reading when Jesus is in Capernaum where, from a distance, he heals the servant of the Centurion (vv. 1-10). Here it get’s slightly complicated. In the RSV we then read in verse 11 that begins our Gospel passage, “Soon afterward”. In the KJV we have “And it came to pass on the day after.” In the Vulgate, “factum est deinceps… next, it happened that…”. In the Douay-Rheims Version, “And it came to pass afterwards…”. The Greek is, “Kaì egéneto tê hexês… It happened successively, next…”. We have this hexês also in Acts 21:1, 25:17, and 27:18 where the context strongly indicates “the next day”. It depends on how “close” you sense “next” is to the action that concluded. For my part, I’ll side with “the next day”. I think I have a good foundation for this choice.
To review, Christ and the disciples are in Capernaum and He meets the Centurion. The next day they are in Nain. Capernaum is on the Sea of Galilee 600 feet below sea level. Nain is 30 miles away and 700 feet above sea level. It is springtime, so the days are still short. That’s a serious hike, probably much of it in the dark, at an upward averaged grade of .82%. With hexes as our key, Christ must have really wanted to be in Nain on that very “next” day, and not some subsequent day. It is possible that He knew something?
Where are we in view of what the Lord did for the widow of Nain? Having lost her husband and only-begotten son, in Greek monogenes, the same word used by John to describe the Lord (e.g., 1:14), this poor woman became one of the most vulnerable people in that culture. She was suddenly one of the anawim, from the Hebrew for “cast down”, without a male to head her household, taken before old age as a sign of God’s disfavor.
Moreover, the place to which He hastened, Nain, is very close to modern Sulam, ancient Shunem, where the Prophet Elisha raised the son of the widow in 2 Kings 4. Also, in the moment that Christ meets the funeral procession he says only two words to the widow of Nain: “Weep not”. In 1 Kings 17, the Prophet Elijah meets the widow Zarephath in a time of punishing drought, says two words, “Fear not”, and raises her son from the dead.
Right after this “chance” meeting with the funeral procession at Nain near Shunem, Christ is able to tell the disciples of John the Baptist that “the dead are raised up”.
John in prison, and the others listening, would have immediately made the connection between Jesus’ answer to John with Isaiah 35, the prophesy of the coming not just of the Messiah, but of God Himself and the renewal of creation. In other words, by His miraculous works Christ revealed Himself to be God. This is why, moments later, He tells everyone a mini-beatitude: “blessed is he who takes no offense at me” (v.23). It was precisely His claim of divinity that led to His crucifixion.
Look at the length, with His hard uphill march, to which Our Savior went to help the widow of Nain.
Look at the length to which He went to save us all from our sins. Having everything in hand, He opened His hands and went uphill to His Cross.
If you are perhaps enveloped in mourning or concern, struck with anxiety and fear about your lot or that of a loved one, remember the resolute tenderness of the Lord for the widow of Nain. If you are lonely or can’t see a way forward, know that Jesus has the same compassion for you as for her. He will extend it to you in the way He knows you most have need of it. If you are carrying the death-bier of the memory of your sins, perhaps still unconfessed, Christ will raise you from your cast-down state.
Seek solace in the sacraments and good works. Of the widow of Nain, St. Ambrose (+397) wrote in his Exposition of the Gospel of Luke 5.92:
Although your sin is grave, and you cannot wash it away with the tears of repentance, let Mother Church weep for you, who, like a widowed mother, intervenes in favor of each of us, as if we were her only children; for she suffers for us with a pain evidently spiritual, but proper to her nature, when she sees that her children are driven to death by their fatal vices. We are viscera drawn from her viscera; there are also spiritual viscera, such as those of Paul when he writes: Yes, brother, I will gain from you this gain: rejoice, my viscera, in Christ (Phm 20). We therefore are the viscera of the Church, since we are the members of His Body of His flesh and bones.