TENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – YEAR C
Commentary of Fr. Fernando Armellini
Soon afterward, Jesus journeyed to a city called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd accompanied him. 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. When the Lord saw her, he was moved with pity for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” He stepped forward and touched the coffin; at this the bearers halted, and he said, “Young man, I tell you, arise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, exclaiming, “A great prophet has arisen in our midst,” and “God has visited his people.” This report about him spread throughout Judea and the surrounding region.
A good Sunday to all.
In the gospels, we have three stories presented as resurrections performed by Jesus. One is very famous, that of Lazarus; then we have that of the daughter of Jairus, one of the rulers of the synagogue of Capernaum. Then, we have a third one, which is the one presented to us in today's gospel passage, the resurrection of the son of the widow of Nain. We wonder if it was the resurrection of a dead man because is it possible to bring a person back from paradise to this world? If a person is dead, he is dead forever. It wouldn't make sense to send him back to die a second time.
Then what was it all about? First of all, let's not talk about resurrection because, for us, resurrection means the conclusion of this life and the entrance into the final life from which there is no turning back. When somebody comes back to our world, he is about to conclude his existence here, but somebody has brought him back; it may even be a doctor who brought him back to life; then we speak of reanimation, that is to say, to get a person back to our world.
What must it have been about then? This episode, which is only told to us by the evangelist Luke, is undoubtedly of recovery from a severe illness that was considered practically impossible to survive because the person was considered dead. And this healing was interpreted as a victory over death, and it was a victory over death, over biological death.
What did the evangelist Luke do? He reread it from the point of view of catechesis and turned it into a parable through which he wanted to help us understand the central message of our faith: victory over death. Reanimation is not a victory over death but only a provisional victory; in the end, death wins. To conquer death means to present the person who concludes his biological life in this world and to demonstrate that physical death does not destroy the person; it completes a specific form of life, but the person does not die to the life God has given him.
It is the central theme and truth of all our faith because if there is no victory over death, nothing makes sense in our existence. Let us see how the evangelist himself invites us to read as a parable what God does for man's life. He begins the passage by saying, "Soon afterward, Jesus journeyed to a city called Nain.” 'Soon after,' because he came from Capernaum, where he healed a servant of the centurion, it was also a victory over death because sickness is always a form of death; it hinders us from living life to the fullest and so, overcoming the disease is a defeat for that part of the death of the person because it is not a whole life that of someone who is sick. But there is an even more severe situation when Jesus arrives in Nain—Capharnaum, about thirty miles from Nain.
First of all, let's situate the place where this episode occurred. In the background, behind me, you can see a picture of the location. In the foreground, behind me, you can see a famous hill, ‘Givat Hamoreh,' which in Hebrew means 'the teacher's hill,’ perhaps about a very renowned teacher who lived in ancient times. Nain is not located on the southern slope of the teacher’s hill but on the north side of this hill (I will show you later).
Let's observe some places that may be of interest to us. In the mountains, Nazareth is at the beginning of the hills of lower Galilee. Nazareth is next to those mountains where the lower part begins. Tabor is also very well seen; that incredible mountain in the center of the plain of Esdraelon extends from the teacher’s hill behind me and further away from the mountains of the lower Galilee. These are very fertile plains. Capernaum is to the east, and from there, Jesus comes to Nain, which is on the north slope of the teacher's hill—we'll see it in a moment—. There we see it; it's on the north slope of the mountain, and I also show you where the cemetery of this town was at the time of Jesus.
Nain in Hebrew means 'delightful' because, as you see, it is in a very fertile place, the Givat Hamoreh, and in ancient times, this hill was covered with oak trees, terebinth trees, willows, tamarisk trees, and in the center of this village was the spring of water. Then, all these fields are very fertile, so Nain is a charming place. As I told you, the cemetery is in the west because the deceased was brought in the direction in which the sun sets. They passed from the light of this life into the darkness of the grave; they followed the course of the setting sun, and Capernaum is east of Nain.
After this geographical presentation, let's move on to the gospel text. First, one last thing I also want to say about the archeology that is indicated now: it is a chapel of 1881; the Franciscans built it over a much older chapel on the site believed to be the house of the widow of Nain. This village is an image that represents a little bit all the villages where our life flows, sometimes lovely.
Even if they are delightful places, and even if there are people blessed by fortune who can afford luxury homes in exotic countries, on islands in the middle of the ocean... joy, however, ends at a given moment when mourning arrives. The smiles turn to tears because an event must be considered. Even if it is beautiful, life at a certain point ends. Remember Psalm 49: “No matter how much a man pays the ransom of his life, it will never be enough to live without end and not see the grave.” Many rich people think their possessions can perpetuate their life; it is impossible. Continues the psalmist: “They shall leave their wealth to others, though they have given their name to cities.” Let us remember the 'Caesareans,' the 'Laodiceans,' and the ‘Alexandria’; these people had given their names to these great cities, but their lives ended.
With Jesus coming from Capernaum are the disciples and a great multitude. It is a procession. In the icon, we see this procession with Jesus, the Lord of life, before it, approaching the town of Nain. The gospel passage says that when he was near the city gate, they carried a dead man to bury him. Again, you see this funeral procession leaving the city in the icon. It is important to remember that here is the encounter of two processions: One is led by Jesus, the Lord of life; the other is led by a dead man, the son of the widow of Nain, and a great multitude follows both procession leaders.
The darkness of the night is falling in Nain because it is at night that the dead are taken to the cemetery in the time of Jesus. This schedule emphasized the passage from life's light to death's darkness. As I have indicated, the cemeteries were outside the city and towards the west, where the sun sets. The dark envelops the mourning crowd and symbolizes the night they are plunged into. All those who have not found the Lord of life are plunged.
A word also to explain how the burial procession was performed at the time of Jesus. There were flute players at the front; then there were barefoot men with their heads covered by cloaks, then the deceased, who was placed on a board covered with a sheet. It was carried on the shoulders, and behind the body of the dead, the mother came (in this case) with the women and the mourners, who emitted heart-rending cries. Then, the corpse was carried and placed on the bare earth, and a stele was placed on top when it was covered. Those who passed by set stones in this tomb, which is still being done today in Jewish cemeteries. Anyone who goes to Israel, for example, will see that in all these tombs, there are stones.
The meaning is lovely. The stone symbolizes a construction; it contributes to a structure, which is a monument on the grave. Whoever passes in front of the tomb of someone they knew and knows that he was a good, honest person who deserves a memorial puts a stone. It means: 'I lay my stone so that the monument to your life and history can be erected.' It is an image that Jesus uses in the gospel when he says: “They killed the prophets... and then they build monuments to these prophets whom they killed, acknowledging that they were right.” Though we have undertaken to make our life beautiful and pleasant in this world, from this world, we must leave. This is our destiny.
The passage from animality to humanity has taught us that our life will end one day. And we know precisely because we are human; the other animals do not know that they must die, but we do. And because we are human, we wonder what happens after death and where we will end up. To eliminate the thinking and questioning that characterizes us as people is not wise; we must think about it; we must ask ourselves this question because from the answer we give comes the decision of the type of life we want to build.
We must get out of this life; it is a question of knowing where to go. We find the answers in the Bible. Job said we are going to the land of darkness and disorder, where light is darkness, towards the road of no return. Job has no prospect of another life; it all ends in the grave; it ends in Sheol. Let us be honest: if we do not meet the Lord of light who overcomes death, not by reanimation, but truly overcomes it so that death can no longer take its prey, then humans will see no other destiny than the darkness of a grave. All that has been done, the good that has been built, the love given, all ends in nothingness.
As humans, we feel powerless in the face of death; when we accompany the body of someone to the cemetery, we embrace each other because we are united by our joint pain and the thought that one day, that procession will pick us up, too. In that funeral procession is the only son of a widowed mother. Here, the mother joins now; she has no name; who is this mother? She has generated a biological life, a life that will surely end. Moreover, this woman is characterized by being a widow and, therefore, without a husband and without hope of giving life, she can only provide biological birth and, therefore, mortal life.
This is our human condition; our humanity, the mother, and precisely our humanity that gives rise to a biological life destined to end cannot give rise to any other life. Many people of this town were with this widow. The multitude remains mute in the face of death; it cannot answer this mystery. We desire to seek life, to carry forward this biological life more and more, but we ask ourselves if it would make any sense to reach an endless old age. Here, we are now faced with a genuinely unfathomable mystery.
Let us now look at these two processions that meet; I would say that they are two processions that collide because there are two guides of these processions: one is the Lord of life, Christ, and the other is a dead man. The processions are enemies, but it is not that they have a conflict in this world, as when Jesus goes to confront the scribes and the Pharisees; there is no such conflict of this kind, but there are two sides that are enemies; life is the enemy of death. There is the Lord of life against the Lord of death; what happens? The Lord of life, Jesus, looking at the woman, is moved. First of all, there is the look of Jesus. Our gaze is precious because when we look at a person or a situation, it enters us and reaches the heart.
It is essential to welcome the problem through our eyes. We remember, for example, the Samaritan who 'sees'; the priest and the Levite stood by. The Samaritan lets that situation come in through the eyes, and when you let it come in through the eyes if you are a sensitive person, the reality goes deep inside you. Here, Jesus sees that woman. Jesus is the Son of God; he sees the condition of humanity that wants to live, but he has only one biological life, and it must end; not even God can make a physical life eternal; it is made to cease.
In the gaze of Jesus enters this problem of humanity. It is humanity that does not understand the meaning of a life that ends like this; it is, after all, the question posed by the Qoheleth that says: 'Man wants to fulfill himself, but he does not find anything that fulfills him, wisdom, power, glory, wealth, prestige... the human person is eternally dissatisfied, there is no value worth living and working for under the sun. All is vanity.' Qohelet was right because if there is no answer to this question of the necessity of life that the person has, then everything is useless; everything is vanity.
The Lord now enters the scene. When the evangelist Luke uses this term to indicate the person of Jesus, he refers to the resurrected one who has conquered death. Jesus is not one of the many prophets who have spoken and acted in the name of God. God himself came among us precisely to answer this question because if this question is not responded to, nothing makes sense anymore. God sees, therefore, our condition; he has come among us and saw this situation of suffering, this question. “And he felt great compassion.” The verb 'esplankenísomai' appears twelve times in the New Testament and always refers to God or Jesus. It is precisely the deep emotion. I was saying before that when one sees a reality of suffering, this look then brings the problem to the heart, and the heart of God feels compassion.
We may ask why God didn't make us immortal and destroy biological death. The answer is that God can't do it; if he could, he would do it because he knows that this type of conclusion of our life disturbs us. He cannot do it because our human condition must end in its biological aspect. Let us now see what God does. Jesus feels this deep pain, which is the loss of a friend and the loss of a family member. Even Jesus, the son of God who became one of us, also experienced this grief that we find in our lives when a loved one dies. Jesus saw Lazarus die, and he wept; Jesus saw his father die; therefore, he understands what it means to lose a friend.
The person feels a deep inner turmoil when faced with death. Perhaps he begins to cry out that life is unfair and cruel; some even blame God. Jesus understands it all; this is the 'esplankenísomai.' Jesus feels the emotion deeply at this questioning of the woman, of humanity that is only capable of giving biological life that ends.
Now, Jesus intervenes and acts gratuitously. This is significant; no request has been made to him; it is an unconditional intervention because man is not able to ask for something that he cannot even understand; it must be a gift that comes directly from God, and Jesus doesn't even presuppose faith, he behaves like that because of the resurrection, that is, the passage of this conclusion of the biological life to the life of God's world is a pure gift of his. What does Jesus do? His gestures are meaningful. He approaches, and he touches the bier. These are essential details because touching the bier makes the person impure.
We remember that the book of Numbers says that the one who touches a dead person, the one who touches a coffin, remains unclean for seven days, and if anyone touches the impure person, he becomes unclean. The water with which it is purified is impure. This is the terror of death, and Jesus touches this coffin, and when he touches it, death is no longer an impurity because he has transformed it into a maternal womb from which one is born for a life that does not end. And therefore, death is no longer a condition of impurity; death is a birth; it marks a birth into the world of God, and it is the beginning of a feast. We indeed mourn because a loved one is no longer with us, and we continue to grieve because he is in this condition; the look of faith makes us see where he has arrived, the wedding feast in the Father's house. And therefore, there is no longer any form of impurity.
When Jesus touches that coffin, the bearers stop; the Lord of life blocks the procession of death. They wanted to go to the cemetery, but that procession was blocked; it didn't go to the cemetery. To the graveyard go the remains, not the person with all his love history. The remains of this person go to the graveyard because the biological life has ended, but he, with all his love story, receives the body of the resurrected.
The person with the body of the resurrected enters full communion without limits; death is not the passage to solitude but toward the fullness of life because the body of the resurrected one, which is no longer made of atoms, is the person who communicates with all the brethren and speaks with God. Therefore, the victory that the Lord acts upon death does not consist in delaying the departure from this world for a few years. When Jesus himself touched the coffin, it stopped this procession that ended in the cemetery, and everything seemed to end there.
Now, what does Jesus say to the dead young man? “Jesus says to him: ‘Young man, I tell you, arise!’ The dead man sat up and began to speak." There are two signs of this victory over death. I said at the beginning that this episode of the healing performed by Jesus was reread as a parable by the evangelist to make us understand what the victory over our death achieved by Jesus consists of. The dead man rises and sits down; this image of sitting down on that board on which he was laid indicates that he has conquered death; he was lying in the coffin, wrapped in the sheet, and now these bonds of death are broken, and he assumes the position of victory that we see the angel taking on Easter morning when he rolls away the stone and sits upon it; it is the gesture of the victor. Then he begins to speak, to communicate.
Death does not deprive us of communication and throws us into solitude but opens us to the entire communication of love; therefore, the opposite of what is considered death, as a place of extreme loneliness, of the impossibility of communication. Resurrection, the entrance into the world of God, is precisely the opposite. Therefore, the person does not go to the cemetery; the remains go to the cemetery. The person with the resurrected body enters this condition of a whole life.
And he is returned to his mother. Here, Jesus gives back to humanity, the son of this humanity, not only with the biological life that this mother provides but with a new life given by God. This son no longer has the life his mother had given him but a new life given to humankind by the resurrected one. Humanity no longer generates sacrificial victims for the monster that is death but generates living ones, not by the power of biological life but by the life given by God, which is the life of the Eternal.
Sometimes, when I talk to non-believers whom, of course, I respect and love, the question I ask the non-believer, to the one who does not believe in the meeting with the Lord of life but stops in this life given by humankind, a biological life that is destined to the cemetery, I ask these people why they have come into the world if they are destined to be consigned to the world of darkness.
Let us try to ask ourselves if it is destiny to which we must consign some new victim of this monster, which is death. If, on the contrary, we are believers, we know that humanity has found the Lord of life. Therefore, this Lord of life gives again to humankind a new son or daughter who has two lives: the biological one which this mother provides, and then the life of the Eternal is given by God. So, everything changes in our life if we have this look given to us by faith.
In fact, "all were overwhelmed." Now, there are no longer two opposing groups; the Lord of life has triumphed, and all are in awe of the extraordinary deed that God has done, this gift that He has offered to humankind. And in fact, "Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, exclaiming, ‘A great prophet has arisen in our midst,’ and “God has visited his people.’ This report about him spread through the whole of Judea and in all the surrounding region.”
This is an invitation that the evangelist makes to us to have this look of faith in addition to the look that everyone has, which is material; a look that makes us see what is the destiny that awaits us. We must, then, announce the joy of this light that we have received from Christ to all our brothers and sisters so that they may live this life in this world with the joy of the one who knows that the destiny that awaits us is the joy of the banquet in the house of the Father.
I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week.
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