Tuesday, Twenty Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

When the people of Nain saw the extraordinary life-giving work that Jesus performed, they were filled with awe and praised God saying, ‘God has visited his people’. We too are drawn to Jesus because we recognise that in and through him God is visiting his people, all of humanity. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus was a visitation from God. The unknown and invisible God is made visible and knowable in the person of Jesus. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus reveals God to be one who brings new life out of death and who restores the loving relationship that has been broken by death. Jesus brought the deceased son of a widow back to life and then immediately gave him back to his mother. There is an image here of how God, through Jesus, continues to work in our lives. God is always at work bringing new life out of our various experiences of death, whether it is the physical death of our loved ones, our own personal death or all those anticipations of death that we experience in the course of our lives. The gospel reading suggests that God’s work of bringing new life out of death involves bringing together again loved ones who have become separated from each other. We can be confident that in bringing us to new life beyond this earthly life, the Lord will restore us to our loved ones, as he restored the young man to his mother. Jesus reveals God to be a God of life and love, who works to bring new life out of death and to restore and enhance all our loving relationships.