I WAS just chatting over coffee to the Craft Group on Friday, June 3, and stories of terrible deprivation in the world kept coming up. It caused me to reflect on how seriously we take suffering?
In the gospel today, June 5, Jesus comes to Nain when a really sad event is going on in the village. Jesus is on the road, accompanied by his disciples and a great crowd. From the village comes a funeral procession heading to the cemetery. A widowed mother, accompanied by her neighbours, goes to bury her only son.
In a few words, Luke has described for us the tragic situation of the woman. She’s a widow, without a husband to care for and protect her in that society, controlled by males. She was left alone with just a son, but now he’s just died also. The woman says nothing. She just mourns her pain. What will become of her?
Jesus does not know the woman but he looks at her steadily. He captures her pain and aloneness, and he is moved to his very core. The dejection of that woman reaches deep inside him. His reaction is immediate: “Don’t cry”. Just can’t stand to see someone crying. He needs to intervene.
He doesn’t stop to think twice. He draws near to the hearse, stops the funeral and says to the dead boy: “Young man, I tell you: get up”. When the youth gets up and starts to talk, Jesus “gave him to his mother” in order to stop her from crying. Once again they are together. The mother will no longer be alone.
It all seems so simple. The story invites the readers to see the revelation of God as Mystery of compassion and life, able to save even from death. It is God’s compassion that makes Jesus so sensitive to the people’s suffering.
In the Church we need to recover compassion as soon as possible as the way of life proper for Jesus’ followers. We need to rescue it from a sentimental and moralizing conception that does the church no service. Compassion that demands justice is Jesus’ great command:
“Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate.”
This compassion is today more needed than ever. From those in power, everything is taken into account except the victim’s suffering. Power works as if there are no victims of suffering; as if there have not been wounded people or losers.
From Jesus’ communities – the Church – we should the protest and it must be taken seriously.; suffering is not acceptable because it is unacceptable to God. God does not want to see people crying. The story of Jesus makes this clear.