How fitting it is that today’s Gospel follows directly after yesterday’s celebration of Our Lady of Sorrows. For in the passage we just heard, Jesus responds with tremendous compassion for a sorrowful mother, a widow who has lost her only son, a widow whom Christ recognizes as a pre-figuring of His own Mother at the Cross and at His tomb. And in his miracle at Nain of raising her son, Jesus, of course, also pre-figures His own Resurrection.
Uniting Our Sufferings
We often encourage ourselves and one another to unite our own sufferings to the sufferings of Christ, and this, of course, is a very good thing to do. But it is also important for us to have Faith in something slightly and subtly different: that Christ sees Himself in us. This, too, is part of the Mystery of the Incarnation. One of the Sunday prefaces for the Eucharistic prayer includes this beautiful line: “For you so loved the world that in your mercy you sent us the Redeemer, to live like us in all things but sin, so that you might love in us what you loved in your Son.” Everything genuinely human in us that is not sinful is something that Christ lived and therefore is something that God loves. When we suffer, our sufferings do not so much become united to Christ’s sufferings by some heroic act of will on our part. Our sufferings are already united to His by the perfect act of Divine Compassion that is Jesus’ Incarnation.
Recognizing Jesus in Everyone
This is the mystery that the great saints recognized, not only in their own lives, but especially in the lives of those around them. Saint Teresa of Calcutta, whose feast day we celebrated recently, saw this reality with such clarity. She recognized the person of Jesus in everyone she met, especially in the very poor and ill. And she also understood, like our own Venerable founder, that this power to see Jesus in ordinary human life begins in prayer and finds its first application in our families. Here is what she said near the end of her acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize: “And so, my prayer for you is that truth will bring prayer in our homes, and the fruit of prayer will be that we believe that in the poor, it is Christ. And if we really believe, we will begin to love. And if we love, naturally, we will try to do something. First in our own home, our next-door neighbor, in the country we live, in the whole world.” May it be so! Amen.
- Today’s Readings
- Father Charlie's inspirational homily was recorded live during Mass at the Father Peyton Center this morning. You can view the Mass (and the Rosary at the 30-minute mark) on the Family Rosary YouTube page.
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