The gospel for the 24th week in Ordinary Time is taken from Luke 7th, chapter 11 to the 17th verse. Jesus journeyed to a city called Naim, and his disciples in a large crowd accompanied him. As he drew near to the gate of the city, a man who had died was. Was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. A large crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, he was moved with pity for her and said to her, do not weep.

He stepped forward and touched the coffin. At this the bearers halted and he said, young man, I tell you, arise. The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized them all and they glorified God, exclaiming, a great prophet has arisen in our midst and God has visited his people. This report about him spread through the whole of Judea and in all the surrounding region. Most of the miracles that Jesus performed were usually done because someone longed for that, cried out for a miracle, cried out for healing.

But this is a different one. This is really an interesting part of how God works with his healing power. It wasn’t anyone crying out for it, not even the person who needed it and longed for it the most. No, it was just his sadness over what she was going through. If Jesus is God incarnate, and he is, that means when God sees us in pain, when he sees negative things happening to us, even though they are part of the plan that God has for us, it moves his heart. He cares, he worries about us.

And what a beautiful image to give a son back to a woman that was all she had. And when you are a widow in that system with no one to be there for you or make money for you, you are a beggar. Jesus saw all that and longed for it to be different. And closing prayer Father, you created a world in which we need to embrace suffering as part of the plan of how we grow and how we change. But help us never to lose fact that he is not happy about that. He’s not doing anything or allowing anything to happen to us.

That’s difficult simply because he doesn’t care. No, he cares deeply about where we are, how happy or how sad we are, how healthy or how sick we are. His concern is the source of so many miracles. Trust in that love when we are in trouble and in pain. And we ask this in Jesus name, amen.