Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity AD 2023

There is probably no one whose heart does not weep at the sight of a mother who has lost her husband and now has to bury her only son. What does a mother feel when she sees her child dying, be it the only one or one of many? Can there be a greater pain of sorrow?

Although it may seem impossible, such pain does exist. A pain greater than even the grief of a mother who has lost a child. This is the pain that God feels when He looks at humanity rushing to destruction. On humanity, which was born of His love, but unfortunately turned its back on this love.

When Jesus saw a funeral procession in the city of Nain, in which a widow’s only son was being carried to the grave, He felt sorry for that poor mother. He walked over to the bier on which the young man was lying, raised him from the dead with His divine touch, and returned him to his mother.

This is a sign of what God wants to do for all of us: He wants to free us from the slavery of mortality. He has given us the hope of eternal life. But He has done something even greater: He has broken the chains of sin and given us rebirth into a new life in righteousness and true holiness.

God’s only-begotten Son became man, suffered, died, and rose from the dead, so that we might be able to comprehend the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of divine love, and be filled with the fullness of God himself.