Lord willing, I’ll eventually get to flesh out these notes from my homily. But even if not, maybe you will still find these useful. I’ll push it up on the list of things to do if there is enough interest.
St. Luke 7:11-16. Now it happened, the day after, that He went into a city called Nain; and many of His disciples went with Him, and a large crowd. And when He came near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother; and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then He came and touched the open coffin, and those who carried him stood still. And He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” So he who was dead sat up and began to speak. And He presented him to his mother. Then fear came upon all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen up among us”; and, “God has visited His people.”
On death, meaning, and separation – and the resurrection from the dead
Because it is read at the narthex at the end of every funeral service as the funeral procession prepares to leave the church, this is a reading with which we are all too familiar. The recollection of this Gospel story combines in our hearts with the music from the funeral, the smell of the incense, and, because these things are bundled together in our experience, our grief. It is that grief – and Christ’s remedy for it – that I want to address today.
Think of this woman has been through; what she is feeling at this moment. St. Luke tells us that she was a widow, so she had already lost her husband. Now she had lost her only son. Her loss was tremendous. [Following St. Nicholai Velimirovich,] I want to share three sinful or unhealthy dimensions of this loss and one that is salvific.
The fear and shame of death.
[Brief on this]
The loss of meaning.
Another huge blow to a mother such as this who has lost her child is the loss of meaning and emptiness that threatens to engulf her. This can take a couple of forms. The first is the temptation to see death as an unmaking, as the ultimate annihilation of meaning. It is like multiplying an equation by zero: no matter how elegant it is or how much work went into its construction, when it is multiplied by zero it disappears. It has no more significance than the equation that never was. The despondency that results from such nihilism can destroy the soul, acting like a black hole that sucks all the joy and purpose from life.
This form of meaninglessness is bad enough, but there is one that is more subtle; and whereas the first type comes like a thief in the night, robbing the person in one great and sudden criminal act, the second builds over time like the pressure behind a poorly constructed dam. It starts our innocently enough. Parents love their children at every stage of each child’s life. They love them when they are developing in the womb, they love them when they are newly born, they love them when they are toddlers, they love them when they are children, they love them when they are teenagers, and they love them when they are grown. Each stage brings new joys and happiness. The love of a parent for a child is blessed. It is an icon of God’s love for us.
The son in this story was a young man. He was the apple of his mother’s eye, and while love of a parent for a child is blessed, if she was like so many of our parents, she had gone past a good and healthy love for her child into something that looks much less like love and more like obsession. Or, to use another word for it, it had become idolatry. When we derive the meaning in our lives from anything other than the eternal and unchanging love of God, we are on dangerous ground. We can turn anything into an idol, but parents are especially tempted to do this with their children. Christians mocked the pagans because they had created gods out of wood and stone – what kind of god could be made and controlled in such a way? No real god could. Children are better gods than idols made of wood or stone: they actually eat the food that is offered to them as sacrifices. They are occasionally capricious (as are the gods that supposedly inhabit the statues the pagans made for them), but they typically respond to gifts with at least temporary beneficence. Parents continually shower their godlings with affection and attention, building them up as best they can, protecting them from harm, and giving them the very best of everything – especially those things the parents never had themselves.
This may sound cruel, as if I were accusing parents for loving their children, but it isn’t love for children that drives this obsession – it is a purely egoistic attempt to find meaning in something that can be controlled. You can see it in the soccer dad who screams like a madman at every practice and game, you can see it in the mother who goes deeper into debt to provide a suitable birthday party experience for her child, you can see it in the parents who allow their children to determine the best way to spend a Sunday morning.
If the Mother of Nain was like so many of our parents, she had worshipped her son, she had served him as she would a god. Now he was gone. Her god, her source of meaning had deserted her. The loss of a child is hard enough without all this extra weight. Is there any wonder why parents try so hard to control and insulate their children?
All parents struggle with this temptation of idolatry – but for the Christian parent, it is doubled: we do not just fear that we will lose our children to physical death, we also fear for the death of their souls! To make matters even worse, the spiritual world is even more dangerous than the physical one. As many threats as are aimed at the bodies of our children (just this past week, we learned to fear bookcases!), even more are thrown at their souls.
Let me reiterate. I don’t want you to misunderstand me: the parents’ desire to protect a child can be holy and salvific, a fruit of genuine love, an living icon of God’s love for his children. But far too often this desire is overbearing and unhealthy, not the result of a desire to protect the life of another, but of the obsessive drive to protect the hope and meaning that they have invested into their fragile idol of flesh and blood.
The Loss of Relationships
[brief on this]
Conclusion: Christ has annihilated death!
[All these: fear/shame; loss of meaning; separation; are removed by Christ. Fear and shame of death through Confession; meaning comes from worshipping Him; relationships are preserved in His love ]
Back to the Gospel story. What does Christ tell the woman? “Weep not”. Why? Tears are good (explain the gift of tears). SO he was not condemning tears of grief (he cried at death himself). He means that we should not weep like those who have no hope. Real grief. Real tears.
