10th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C

Today's Gospel account is of the resurrection of the widow of Nain's only son. Luke tells us that Jesus had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. The crowd is seized by fear and they glorify God.

In a sermon on this gospel, St. Augustine told his congregation:

All believers are moved when they hear the accounts of the miracles wrought by Jesus, our Lord and Savior, though they are affected by them in different ways. Some are astounded by his wonderful physical cures, but have not yet learnt to discern the greater miracles that lie beyond the world of sense. Others marvel that the miracles that they hear of our Lord working on people’s bodies are now being accomplished more wonderfully in their souls.

No Christian should doubt that even today the dead are being raised to life. Yet, while everyone has eyes capable of seeing the dead rise in the way the widow’s son rose, as we have just heard in the gospel, the ability to see the spiritually dead arise is possessed only by those who have themselves experienced a spiritual resurrection.

It is a greater thing to raise what will live for ever than to raise what must die again. When the young man in the gospel was raised, his widowed mother rejoiced; when souls are daily raised from spiritual death, mother Church rejoices. The young man was dead in body, these latter are dead in spirit. Those who witnessed the lad’s visible death mourned openly and visibly, but the invisible death of the dead in spirit was neither seen nor thought about.

Jesus raises the widow of Nain's son, Codex Aureus of Echternach, ca 1030-1050