Jesus is walking toward the town of Nain when he encounters a funeral procession coming the other way. Two crowds are about to meet, one following Jesus, the other following a coffin. But what gets me most about this story isn't just the miracle that happens next; it's that moment when Luke tells us Jesus "was moved with pity for her." That phrase in the original language means his heart was completely torn up with compassion. This isn't God looking down from heaven feeling sorry for someone; this is God right there in the mess of human pain, feeling it as deeply as we do.
The widow walking behind her son's coffin represents all of us when we're at our most broken. She hasn't just lost her boy; she's lost everything. In those days, a widow without sons had no security, no future, no one to take care of her. Her grief isn't just about missing someone she loved, it's about facing a terrifying unknown. We've all been there in different ways, haven't we? Those moments when loss doesn't just take away what we cherish, but seems to strip away our very identity, our sense of what comes next. And here's what's remarkable: Jesus sees her pain and doesn't wait for her to ask for help. He doesn't make her prove her faith first. He acts simply because she's suffering, and that moves him to his core.
"Young man, I tell you, arise!" When Jesus speaks these words, he's not just talking to a dead teenager in an ancient town; he's speaking to every part of our lives that feels dead, hopeless, or forgotten. As Catholics, we know this miracle points forward to the resurrection we'll all experience someday, but it's also about what God wants to do in our lives right now. Jesus doesn't just want to raise us up at the end of
The crowd's reaction says everything: they start praising God and saying, "God has come to help his people!" They recognize that something extraordinary has broken into their ordinary Tuesday. This is exactly what we're invited to see in our own lives. Every single day, God shows up in our difficult moments, sometimes dramatically, sometimes quietly, but always with that same compassion that moved Jesus when he saw the widow's tears. The question is whether we're paying attention. When we start recognizing God's compassion at work, in unexpected healing, in relationships that get restored, in hope returning where we thought it was gone forever, we become witnesses too. We become people who can tell others that death, in all its forms, doesn't get the last word.
©2025 James Dacey Jr.
