HOMILY for 15th Sun after Pentecost (Dominican rite)
Gal 5:25-26, 6:1-10; Luke 7:11-16
The little Galilean village of Nain would have been forgotten and lost to history were it not for this miracle recorded only in St Luke’s Gospel. The location of Nain is not without significance. It is a short distance from Mount Tabor, within sight of the holy mountain where Our Lord was Transfigured. And this is fitting because it was on Tabor that Jesus revealed his glory to his disciples; it was on Tabor that Peter, James, and John had a glimpse of the resurrection and the heavenly life to come. So, too, through this miracle at Nain, it is as if his resurrection glory, shining forth from Mount Tabor, falls upon the widow’s son, and the dead young man is raised to life. This miracle, therefore points to the Resurrection of Christ through whom all the dead shall be raised to new life.
In the 4th century the bishop Eusebius of Caesarea noted that Nain was near another Biblical place, Endor where king Saul had consulted a witch and had asked her to summon the dead prophet Samuel in a séance so that he could consult him. There, at Endor, through a diabolical deception, the supposed ghost of Samuel is summoned and he speaks disaster for the king and his dynasty. One might say that due to Saul’s betrayal of God by daring to summon spirits and consult witches, God had abandoned Saul’s kingdom, and so it fell to the Philistines. So, the miracle at Nain reminds us that only God, who alone is the source of all life, can raise the dead; only God can give life and shed his glory upon Man. Hence, when Christ comes to the land and performs this miracle at Nain, the people cry out: “God has visited his people!”
Whereas Saul, in desperation at Endor, had looked to counterfeit powers and influences for life and hope of victory, in fact all he gains is death and destruction. For without God, there is only falsehood, failure, and destruction. For this is the destiny of Satan, and the evil spirits, and those who consort with the devil such as witches and mediums and fortune-tellers do. Therefore, at Nain, the Lord calls us to place our hope in him, and not in false gods nor in seductively easy and ‘quick fix’ so-called solutions that lead only to destruction. Instead, with patience and fortitude and with the theological virtue of hope, we profess: “exspécto resurrectiónem mortuórum, et vitam ventúri sǽculi”, ‘I look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come’. As Christians, therefore, we profess our faith in eternal life in Christ and with Christ and through Christ, a heavenly glory that is foreseen on Mount Tabor by the apostles, where Jesus spoke with Moses and Elijah, with those two prophets who are known in Judaism as the “living ones”, the undying ones. The glorious event of the Transfiguration makes clear that they receive their life from God, indeed, from Jesus Christ. So all who look to Christ, and who hear his Word, shall receive the gift of eternal life. All this is prefigured in the miracle at Nain of which we have heard in today’s Gospel.
Now when Jesus raises the only son of the widow of Nain, he does so purely by his Word, with a command: “Young man, I say to you, arise!” For God’s Word is creative and life-giving. As the psalmist says: “By the Word of the Lord, the heavens were made” (Ps 33:6). So just as God creates all things through his Word, so too, by his Word, God brings a new creation into being, a new heavens and a new earth, and he restores all things to new life. Hence the people cried out, God has visited his people. For they recognised, in awe-filled fear, that in Christ, God is present among us. In Christ, God comes and shares our human condition; the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And Christ does this, and works his miracles, so that through these signs and wonders the people can see that God has come to redeem and heal and restore all of creation. For creation had fallen under the influence of the Evil One, creation had been alienated from God, and Man had turned away and worshipped false gods, indeed, Man had tried to set himself up in place of God. But this only leads to death, failure and destruction. Therefore, Christ, moved by compassion at the predicament of Mankind (who is represented by the poor weeping widow of Nain) has come to save Mankind: by the power of his living Word, God comes to raise us first of all from the spiritual death of sin, which has cut us off from God, the source of all life. By his Word, therefore, he raises us to the new life of grace which is our life now, as Christians. And then Christ has come, secondly, to give us new hope in the “life of the world to come”. For as he says in St John’s Gospel: “all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgement.” (Jn 5:28f) So, it is by his Word, too, that our bodies and souls will be raised after death to eternal life, hopefully, with Christ in heaven. The miracle at Nain which is accomplished simply by Christ’s Word, therefore, points to both these new realities brought about by the Lord.
I want to focus now just on the life of grace, the raising of our bodies and souls from the spiritual death of sin. How does this happen? St Paul tells us in the epistle that our Christian lives involves dying to our old selves. Our sinful bodily habits and cravings have to die. So, too, our spiritual bad habits of pride, envy, self-conceit and so on. Then, the Holy Spirit, active in us through the grace of the sacraments, will raise us to a new life, to a new way of being and doing and behaving. As St Paul says: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another… For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” (Gal 5:25, 6:8)
If we pay attention to the original Greek text of today’s Gospel, it’s interesting to note that when Jesus commands the dead young man, he does not use the passive form, “Be raised”, but rather the active form, “Arise”, or in other translations “Get up”. So, although Christ, being God, is the cause of the miracle, the recipient is not entirely passive but co-operative. For it is likewise in the Christian life of grace, as we know. Although God is the giver of all grace, and the cause and origin and perfecter of our every good act, we must also be open to his grace and, as it were, co-operate with it, allowing God to be active in us and with us and through us. Hence St Augustine said: “God created us without us: but he did not will to save us without us.”
Looking closely again at the miracle recounted in today’s Gospel, notice that, at Christ’s command, the dead man sits up, and then he begins to speak. Before one can speak, one has to draw breath. This action of the dead man, therefore, is an analogy for the life of grace. By the Word of God, we have been raised to new life for it is through the sacraments, principally through Baptism, that the Word of God is at work, and is bringing his new creation to be. As we hear Jesus declare in the book of the Apocalypse: “Behold, I make all things new” (Apoc 21:5).
Through the sacraments, Christ makes new all of creation; through the sacraments, Christ is at work to renew you and me with his grace so that we become a new Man, fully alive and mature in Christ. This comes about by the power of the Holy Spirit active in us. So, just as the young man of Nain has to breath in before he speaks, so we must breath in the Holy Spirit, the divine Breath of God, so that, with the Holy Spirit active within us, with God’s grace working in us, we can speak. Raised by God to new life, therefore, we are not to speak empty words nor words of gossip nor detraction nor words that are destructive and devoid of charity. Rather, we are enabled by the Spirit to praise God in our words and in our actions, so that we shall, indeed, proclaim the Gospel of salvation to those around us in what we say and in what we do. Thus St Paul says to you and to me: “as we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” (Gal 6:10) Therefore, let our lives shine with good works and so give glory to our heavenly Father (cf Mt 5:16), for we draw our life from the Risen Lord: like the young man at Nain, we lift our face towards the light of Tabor, and turn our back on Endor.
