The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity AD 2024

St. Augustine tells in his “Confessions” how he was once about to die of some serious illness, and if he had died at that moment, he would have gone to hell with all his unrepented sins. It was only the prayers of his loving mother that saved both his body and, more importantly, his soul.

St. Augustine writes: “I see not then how she should have been healed, had such a death of mine stricken through the bowels of her love. And where would have been those her so strong and unceasing prayers, unintermitting to Thee alone? But wouldest Thou, God of mercies, despise the contrite and humbled heart of that chaste and sober widow, so frequent in almsdeeds, so full of duty and service to Thy saints, no day intermitting the oblation at Thine altar, twice a day, morning and evening, without any intermission, coming to Thy church, not for idle tattlings and old wives' fables; but that she might hear Thee in Thy discourses, and Thou her in her prayers. Couldest Thou despise and reject from Thy aid the tears of such an one, wherewith she begged of Thee not gold or silver, nor any mutable or passing good, but the salvation of her son's soul?”

There are countless mothers who have prayed for the body and soul of their children in the same way throughout the centuries. And so our spiritual Mother – the Church – prays for all of us. It is hard to imagine anything more devastating than a mother having to bury her son. Especially if the mother is a widow and it is her only son. But there is something even more devastating: when a mother should bury her son knowing that her son’s soul will go to hell.

The number one duty of all of us is to pray for the salvation of souls. We must do this as human beings for our neighbors and as a Church, thinking both of those who have already become children of God in baptism, and of those who are not yet part of the family of the redeemed. We must pray that Jesus would touch all the spiritually dead as He touched the young man of Nain and raise them to eternal life.