Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
On Friday morning, I found myself at the graveside as a
mother buried her only son—a life lost tragically, and much too young. As things were winding down, she took
my hand and said, “I’ve read the readings for Sunday, Father. Why can’t Jesus do for me what he did
for that mother in the gospel?” It
was a hard question to hear, and an even harder question to answer.
Not much more than an hour later, I was visiting the home of
a widow in the parish—a mother of four, who had buried two of those children before
they turned five. Years later, she
lost her husband. Her living
children moved away, and no longer practiced the Catholic faith she worked so
hard to instill in them. One of
them was estranged from her mother—not even speaking to her. This past winter was a long
string of serious illnesses, leaving her pretty much confined to her home. And yet she spoke to me with such a
radiant smile: “Father, I’ve lived long enough and endured enough hardship and
heartache to know that whenever I suffer, whenever I face a loss, whenever
somebody or something dies, that just means the Lord has some even greater
blessing in store for me.” Here
was a woman who understood that in order to get to Easter, one must pass by way
of Good Friday. When she feels the
wood of the Cross pressing upon her shoulder, instead of being weighed down by
it, her heart is uplifted and her spirit raised. Her hope is clearly anchored in the core mystery of our
faith: “We proclaim your Death, O Lord, and profess your Resurrection, until you
come again.”
The four gospels record only three people ever being revived
by Jesus during his earthly ministry.
I tend to think of this, not only as the most spectacular, but also the
most cruel of his miracles. Where
are any of them now? The young daughter
of Jairus, and the Lord’s dear friend, Lazarus, and this son of the widow of
Nain—they were all restored to life, only to die once again. Yes, Jesus came to rescue us, but
not from those things that pose a threat to the life of the body.
The first Christians of the city of Rome were called a most
unusual nickname by their pagan neighbors: The Diggers—as in the
gravediggers. Long before
Christians could build churches for public worship, they were digging out
catacombs outside of town to reverently bury their dead. This was not the Roman way. The ancient Romans had a deep fear of
death, and a deep distaste for looking upon a dead body. They were rather unsure about a life
after this one, yet dreaded being haunted by the departed. The human body was seen as little more
than a disposable container for the soul, to be discarded as swiftly as
possible: into a mass grave for the poor, or by cremation for the rich. These new Christians, however, were
notably different. They
carried the bodies of their dead in procession. They entombed their remains as something sacred. They would regularly visit their
graves. They were not afraid of
death nor of the dead—which affected not only how they treated their dead, but
also how they treated the living. This distinguishing feature of their lives was rooted in
their faith “in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the
resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.”
The world around us is increasingly like that in which lived
the first Christians of Rome. We
need to distinguish ourselves just like they did. It’s not because, in the face of the hard questions raised
by life and death, we have all the answers; it’s because we still know there’s
only one source for sure hope: “We proclaim your Death, O Lord, and profess
your Resurrection, until you come again.”
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