"For we are like olives, only when we are crushed do we yield what is best in
us."
- excerpt from The Talmud
Before
we reach heaven, we are never free from hard times. All kinds of
tragedy can befall us, and the greatest tragedies are physical death
and mortal sin, spiritual death. Yet in both of these, we see God is stronger than death.
The
widow of Zarephath and the widow in today's Gospel present us today
with the tragedy of physical death. Death is never easy. Death is
an evil we must suffer, just as we suffer pain. Evil is an absence
of a good that should be present. (All sin is a lack of love and of
truth). We can't understand death, nor any evil, because it is
inherently against reason.
However,
God can create something from nothing – from the shapeless void he
made the entire universe. While science can explain the universe,
for example the Big Bang, it cannot explain beyond the universe, like
where the Big Bang, so to speak, got it's dynamite and fuse. God can
create from absolutely nothing. Where there is any evil, any absence
of good, such as death, God can bring good through it by his creative
power. Thus euthenasia – falsely described as “mercy
killing” - is never acceptable because is deprives us of the most
foundational gift that God has given us: Life. It is also despair:
giving up, rejecting the cross' power to save us.
Saint
Paul today presents us with the horror of spiritual death. “
I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy
it.”
The shame that Paul carries for being so tragically wrong about
Jesus is only healed by his trust in God's merciful forgiveness. His
sins hurt both him and many others, but the Lord God has healed him
(and many others) through his creative power. This is why Paul works
so tirelessly for the Gospel: to make up for his failings and to
share his joy with all.
When
Jesus looked upon the funeral procession in today's Gospel and was
moved with a gut-wrenching compassion, I can't help but think that he
must have thought of his own mother. Mary also would be a widow
losing her only Son, seemingly without anyone left in the world to
provide for and protect her. No one knows the evil of death and the
horror of sin more perfectly than she, just as no one knows the
darkness of a cave except those who live under the full radiance of
daylight.
Our
Lord's miracle and the miracle of the prophet Elijah both reflect the
glory of the resurrection and foretell it. It shows us that in God,
the Cross transcends time, even in reverse, but also into the future,
into our own time and place.
“God
has visited His People.” This is the same thing we proclaim
when remembering the gift of the Eucharist.
Here
our Lord Jesus come to us in our tragedies, bringing the pain of the
cross but also the victory of the Resurrection. If we are faithful
and seek the Lord's healing, than God who created something from
nothing can bring the good of His Love into the darkness of our pain
and tragedy. May we have the faith to let our Lord touch us, and may
the Blessed Mother encourage us in that faith.
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