Two widows

Homily for June 5, 2016 (10th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
1 Kings 17:17-24; Psalm 30; Galatians 1:11-19; Luke 7:11-17

Being a widow has rarely been easy, especially for those with stable and healthy marriages.  In addition the loss of a spouse’s companionship and the stresses of reorienting one’s life, widows today may also face economic problems, disconnection from networks of friends, and other challenges.

However, life as a widow in the biblical world was much tougher.  Because of the religious and social mores of the day, widows were especially vulnerable to social isolation, poverty, abuse and exploitation.  Unless they were able to able to remarry or move in with an older son or brother-in-law, they were pretty much on their own; and in a very stratified and patriarchal society, that wasn’t a good place to be.  The roots of the words for widow in Hebrew and Greek were telling:  the Hebrew alem meant “unable to speak,” and the Greek ghé could mean “barren” or “forsaken.”

In today’s scripture passages we encounter two widows:  one in Zarephath in Sidon at the time of Elijah and another in Nain when Jesus was engaged in his public ministry.  Both had not only lost their husbands but had just lost their sons.  Bereft of those they loved and who could help support them, they were mourning and anxious, feeling a profound loss and looking at perhaps greater losses to come.

Both saw their sons brought back to life through the compassion of God.  The widow of Zarephath experienced it through the prophet Elijah, who literally laid himself out for her son after pleading with God that he would be saved.  It’s important to recall that Elijah had his own problems.  He was in a pitched battle for the soul of Israel against the king and queen, Ahab and Jezebel, who sought refuge in idolatry and political and military alliances instead of the LORD. Jesus risked ritual impurity in touching the coffin of the widow of Nain’s son as he urged him, “Young man, I tell you, arise!”

Compassion is a virtue, but compassion under stress and at personal risk is a real gift.  I recently watched a movie entitled The Letters, about the life and ministry of Bl. Theresa of Calcutta, who will be canonized in September.  She embodied compassion for the most marginalized people, even those considered “untouchables;” and remarkably she did it while suffering through decades of spiritual dryness and haunted with the feeling that God had abandoned her.  Yet her trust in that same God enabled her to do amazing and wonderful things.  As St. Paul told the early Christians in Galatia, the gospel that we preach is not of human origins.  It is rooted in a God who is good, loving and compassionate—a God who only asks that we share what we have so generously and mercifully received. +