The Lord’s command, “Do not weep,” certainly seems frustrating – as though there were a more obvious appropriate response. In the past healings we’ve seen in Luke’s Gospel, some kind of request was made – Jesus was asked to heal. In today’s Gospel, we see that the tears of a mother weeping over the death of her only son is stronger and more pertinent than the various forms of intercession. Jesus does not wait for her to ask something of Him: her tears and her devastation are enough to move Him. God does not remain unmoved by our suffering or grief until we make some kind of effort to pray. The Word became flesh so that flesh itself might become instrumental in our healing and our relationship with God. The young man is brought back to life in the flesh at the mere touch of Jesus. That contact, that physical gesture, brought the full power of the Word of Life to bear on the flesh of the dead.
Monday of the Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
“There must be factions among you in order that also those who are approved among you may become known.” St. Paul, already in the first century, has to correct the Church in Corinth whose members had allowed selfishness and bad teaching to create division. The Love of Christ does not permit us to treat someone better or worse based on their social standing. In fact, it obliges us to commune with rich and poor alike: refraining from indulging and excess when we are with the rich, and sparing no expense when it comes to using our wealth to help and comfort the poor. We should in fact extend this equal treatment even to our leaders: refraining from indulging in their authority by giving them power they ought not to have, and coming to their aid when their weakness and poverty are made manifest.
Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Suffering is quite naturally the least appealing part of human experience. Suffering isn’t just pain, it isn’t just a physical experience, it isn’t just sadness. Suffering applies to every way we are deprived of what is good. Sin is suffering because by choosing what seems to be good over what is really good, we deprive ourselves. Jesus takes all forms of human suffering upon Himself so that we may never find ourselves alone when we suffer. Jesus even takes upon Himself the suffering due to sin – though He Himself never sinned. He allowed Himself to be condemned and punished as a criminal, as a sacrifice – the Innocent One – so that we sinners might find refuge in Him. The One who was without sin became sin so that He might destroy it once and for all in His flesh. His body, broken on the Cross, is the image of our broken soul – broken by sin and suffering. The divinity of Christ – a sure support and powerful force of healing – carries the brokenness and weakness of Christ’s flesh all the way through His death to the Resurrection.