A SAD STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING
Tuesday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
My dear encountered couples:
We all feel deep sorrow for parents who lose their children to death. This widow of Naim lost her only son. Jesus gave him back to her. Would that all parents could receive their dead children back! It will happen, but most likely not in this life. Mothers and fathers will have to wait until they enter the next life to be able to be with their children. But Jesus, by his miraculous and kind act for this woman, wants to assure us that all our dead loved ones are still alive, they are not gone forever, just for the short time that we ourselves remain here.
We aren’t told the age of this son who died. Jesus addresses him as “Young man,” but he may have been an adult young man or a child, we don’t know. To a parent the age matters little. No parent wants to lose a child of any age to death. Children are a part of their parents, and to lose that part must be the most wrenching of all earthly experiences.
But there’s a certain hidden joy for parents who have lost a child. They have brought into existence a little one who will live forever. They have given life to someone who can enjoy an eternity of happiness that is far beyond the dreams and hopes of any parents for their children. Parents also make God happy. They provide for him someone else to love and care for. And that’s what God likes doing best. The widow of Naim was sad, then happy. May all parents be given her strength, and enter into her joy.
