An Instruction for the 20th Sunday After Pentecost (14)

«Young man, I say to you, arise» (Lk 7:14).

In today’s Gospel you heard, beloved brothers, the account of the Savior’s raising of the only son of a certain widow, living in the city of Nain. It happened this way. The Lord Jesus Christ was going from the city of Capernaum to the city of Nain, teaching and healing. «And many of His disciples went with Him, and a large crowd. And when He came near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother; and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and told her: do not weep. Then He came and touched the open coffin, and those who carried him stood still. And He declared: young man, I say to you, arise. So he who was dead sat up and began to speak. And He presented him to his mother» (Lk 7:11-15).

Beloved brothers! We too are all spiritually dead. «Let the dead bury their own dead» (Mt 8:22), the Lord said to one of His disciples, who had asked His permission first to go and bury his own father, and then to follow the Savior—that is, leave the dead in soul, though alive to outward appearance, in body, to bury their own dead in body. «You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead» (Apok 3:1); so the Lord likewise says, in Revelation, to a certain man who was, it would seem, pious. Yes, we are dead in soul, brothers; and so too, quite often, the Lord, by His powerful, living word, by His all-effecting grace, rouses our own souls, put to death by sin, from their deathlike sleep of sin; our own souls, even now, often hear His all-quickening word, just as that dead young man of Nain heard it: young man, I say to you, arise—and they rise up at His voice.

This happens in the following way: let us say one of us is envious, or fond of money; another is proud, ambitious, boastful; a third is given over to drunkenness, idleness, laziness, empty pleasures, deceit and extortion; another suffers from the sickness of unbelief, or defiles his own body and sins against his own body; another boasts of something vain and perishable—for instance, of honors, wealth, or fine clothes—and, in consequence, each of these people is cold in soul toward God and toward works of piety, and given over almost entirely to earthly things. Is it not true, beloved brothers, that all these people, who have turned their sins into habit and passion, are spiritually dead, and carry a dead soul within a living body? It is so. But then the Lord touches our heart with His grace, through the word of God preached in the Church, or through the good counsel of those close to us, or through a good thought which He sends into our own soul, darkened by sin—or He touches our sinful body with some sickness which He sends, or He visits us with some loss, for instance the loss of close relatives, the loss of our own property; or He threatens us with imminent danger of suddenly losing our own life on land or at sea; or He acts in some other way, by His grace, upon our own soul. And what happens? We, spiritually dead, very often come to life through this—that is, we begin to feel the vanity, the perishability of everything earthly, and the soul’s necessity for a true, living faith in God and for works of virtue, which we had previously disregarded; we begin to repent, from the heart, of our own disordered past life; a broken spirit and a humble heart appear in us; we are moved to tenderness at the thought of God’s great long-suffering toward us; we count ourselves the greatest of sinners; we weep over our own errors, and firmly resolve, and begin to lead, a life entirely different, one pleasing to God. And it is here that a miracle takes place, very much like the one that happened to the dead son of the widow of Nain: the young man sat up—that is, our own soul rises from its sleep of sin, begins to speak words of salvation—began to speak—and the Lord gives it back, raised from spiritual death, to its own mother—that is, to the Holy Church, which is our Mother—for its spiritual upbringing and its guidance toward the life to come.

Behold, beloved brothers, a wondrous raising from the dead, the cause of which is the Lord alone. And it is higher, more beneficial, than the resurrection of the body: for here it is the immortal soul, redeemed by the blood of the Son of God, that rises from death to life, and not the perishable body! God grant that there may be many more such miracles with all of us.

O Lord! Seeing in the city of Nain a widow weeping bitterly, You, moved then with compassion, raised her son, who was being carried out for burial; so too now have compassion on me, O Lover of mankind, and raise up my own soul, put to death by sin. Amen.