Naim, where Christ raised the widow's son from death, was not a place where he was well-known. So why did he go there?
Editor’s Notes
On the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, the Church reads the account of Our Lord’s raising of the widow’s son, at the city of Naim (“Nain” in modern parlance). This occurred during a preaching tour of Galilee, soon after the healing of the centurion’s servant, and before the embassy of St John the Baptist’s disciples.
There are only three accounts of Christ raising the dead, namely the widow’s son, Jairus’ daughter, and Lazarus. In this first such miracle, Christ manifests his power over life and death without being asked, foreshadowing greater resurrections to come.
Anecdoate: ‘The Widow’s Son’, Freemasonry, Oscar Wilde, Manning and Newman
In passing, an interesting anecdote: “the widow’s son” is a key concept in Freemasonry. However, in that detestable sect, it refers to Hiram Abiff, the central character in the Masonic ritual. The phrase “Is there no help for the widow’s son?” is allegedly a key phrase in the ritual of the third degree of master mason, and the ultimate masonic “distress signal,” which no freemason may ignore.
Oscar Wilde gave testimony to this in an account of his life in prison:
“As I was walking round the yard one day I noticed that one of the men awaiting trial was signaling to me by Masonic sign. I paid no attention until he made me the sign of the widow's son, which no mason can ignore. He managed to convey a note to me. I found he was in for fraud of some kind and anxious that I should get my friends to petition for his release. He was quite mad, poor fellow. As he would always insist on signaling and I was afraid the warders would get to notice it, I persuaded Major Nelson to let me wear black goggles until he was convicted and sent to Portland.”
This is not the only masonic phrase that appears to refer to Christianity, and is liable to deceive the uninitated. The freemason Yasha Beresiner gives another example, again in relation to Wilde:
“‘J & B’ are interpreted by Oscar, at the instigation of [J.E.C.] Bodley, as ‘St John the Baptist,’ on which Oscar, in his maiden speech to the Brethren and other non-Masonic guests, says:
‘… I have heard that St J(ohn) the B(aptist) was the founder of this order. I hope we shall emulate his life but not his death – I mean we ought to keep our heads!'
“His comments and wit are responded to with ‘Yells of laughter’. Scholars have been at a loss to understand why Oscar's comments should have caused 'Yells of laughter', as recorded by Bodley in his diary.
“The explanation may lie in that the Masons present would have appreciated the substitution and thus the misinterpretation of the letters J & B as referring to John the Baptist’s. The words used in the Masonic ritual refer to the two pillars in King Solomon's Temple as described 1 Kings 7:15-22:
‘...He erected the pillars at the portico of the temple. The pillar to the south he named Jakin and the one to the north Boaz The capitals on top were in the shape of lilies. And so the work on the pillars was completed'.
“Oscar himself will have remained unaware, having only gone through one single ceremony, of the correct words used in the ritual and thus his reference to John the Baptist will have been all the more amusing to those familiar with the correct wording.”
J.E.C. Bodley, who is mentioned as deceiving Wilde as to the meaning of these letters, was also responsible for initiating Wilde into Freemasonry in 1875.
This same Bodley wrote a biography of Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, and has been described by Roy Jenkins as “almost certainly [Manning’s] most intimate non-Catholic friend.” This biography seems to be the only source for the claim that Manning believed Cardinal Newman, Fr Coleridge’s friend and associate, to be guilty of “ten distinct heresies.”
This same biography also praised Manning for allegedly being uninterested in securing converts to the Catholic Church, partisan loyalty as an Anglican, and for “unreserved liberality” on the topic of the dogma outside the Church there is no salvation.
Now, we do not put store by any of these claims; nor do we do not wish to impugn Manning for friendship with Bodley – though some purveyors of the “anti-Newman legend” have tried to impugn Newman for far more tenuous acquaintances.
The point, however, is that Newman’s critics should consider the unsavoury and unreliable provenance of this anecdote before raising it against him.
So much for that. Now to Fr Coleridge, who in this part tells us…
Why Christ chooses Naim to reveal his power over death
Why compassion governs Providence, selecting a widow’s loss to attest Messiahship
How this first recorded resurrection prepares faith and answers St John the Baptist’s impending question.
He shows us that Christ’s mercy and mission demanded haste, while danger gathered in Galilee.
S.D.Wr.
The Raising of the Widow’s Son
The Training of the Apostles—Part II
Chapter XII
St. Luke. vii. 11-16; Story of the Gospels, § 51
Burns and Oates, London, 1882
Our Lord’s visit to Capharnaum
It appears that this visit of our Lord to Capharnaum, during which He healed the servant of the faithful Centurion, was a break in the course of the evangelical circuit of preaching, which He began after the conclusion of the Sermon on the Plain.
He did not stay long in the city which had come to be called His own. Indeed, as we have seen, He was not safe there, and those who loved Him best in simple human affection, could not wish Him to expose Himself to the malice of the powerful conspirators against His life.
It seems, also, as if our Lord’s preaching at this time was marked by even unusual earnestness and perseverance, as it was to be almost His last time of labouring regularly in Galilee. The moment He was known to be at Capharnaum, crowds would naturally flock to Him, all the more if the miracle on the Centurion’s servant got to be widely known. The laboriousness of His own teaching communicated itself to His disciples, who by this time had much to do on such occasions in the way of instructing converts and preparing them for direct intercourse with our Lord or the reception of Baptism.
It might naturally seem to His near relations, of whom we have been speaking in the last chapter, that a visit such as this to Capharnaum might be a moment of repose to Him and His hardly worked companions. They could not enter into the knowledge in which He habitually lived of the value of souls, of the danger of missing opportunities, and of the special reasons which there might be for doing all that could be done in Capharnaum while there was yet time.
His return to His missionary work
The great miracle lately wrought would have stirred up afresh the enthusiasm of the people, and brought back for the moment the happy readiness to believe and listen to Him, which had characterized the inhabitants of the city when He first began to make it His home. So our Lord worked on, we are not told for how long, notwithstanding the exertions of His friends to induce Him to relent and rest and look after His own safety. His time was not yet come, nor was it to be in Galilee that His enemies were to carry out to the end their designs against His life.
The occasion passed away, and in a few days He was probably again on His evangelical tour, passing from town to town, and village to village. In the course of this circuit the next great recorded miracle occurred. It is evidently related by St. Luke in the place which it occupies in his Gospel, for the distinct purpose of explaining the incident which follows next after it, that is, the embassy of the disciples of St. John Baptist to ask our Lord whether He were in truth the Messias.
It is not too much to conclude that it was also worked by our Lord for the purpose of arousing the attention of the people, for the first time, by a miracle in which He displayed His power over life and death, and of so kindling an enthusiasm which might make itself felt even in the remote prison of His beloved friend the Baptist, thus to give him the opportunity of bearing, in truth, his last witness to our Lord before his head fell at the behest of a lascivious dancing-girl.
Incident of a raising from the dead
The miracle of which we are now about to speak belongs to that class, among the similar works of our Lord, in which He seems to have acted with a distinct purpose of manifesting His glory and power, without any positive solicitation, on the part either of the subjects of the miracles or of any one in their name.
In this respect it stands in striking contrast to the miracle just now related, the healing of the Centurion’s servant. In that case a very considerable amount of influence, if we may so speak, had been exerted in order to induce Him, as men thought, to work the miracle. In the present case, there is nothing of the kind. It seems as if He was on the look out for an opportunity to work a wonder of mercy, still more surprising than any which have been as yet recorded in the course of the Gospel history.
We cannot of course be certain that, up to this time, our Blessed Lord had not raised any one from the dead. But no such miracle has been mentioned, up to this time, by the Evangelists. If it were the case, as is most probable, that this was indeed the earliest instance of a raising from the dead, it may also be supposed that, as to this class of miracle, people would hardly have thought of asking for such favours, on account of the dulness of their faith as yet unremoved.
There would probably not be many cases in which they would reason with the simplicity of which we have seen an instance in the Centurion, and there is certainly a natural and just tendency in our minds to consider the power of restoring the dead to life one of the very highest, if not the very highest, of all the manifestations of power altogether Divine and reserved to God.
Miracles of the Prophets
The few instances found among the Prophets would serve rather to enhance the singular pre-eminence of such wonders than the reverse. But our Lord was to manifest this power also, as well as those of which we have already had instances, and we cannot think but that the time and occasion of this manifestation were carefully arranged, in the Providence of His Father, with reference to the evidence which was gradually accumulating concerning His Divine Person and Mission.
Thus He had spoken to the Jewish rulers at Jerusalem, in the long discourse in which, after the miracle at the Probatic Pool, He had set forth for them the various kinds of evidence by which His Mission was attested, of this sort of miracle as something future. And, though He may have had more directly in His mind the future resurrection of all men by the power of the Son of Man, it is likely that He also intended to prepare them for resurrections to be worked in His Public Life, the last and most wonderful of which was the raising of Lazarus close to Jerusalem itself, a miracle so splendid, so unquestionable in all its details, as to drive His enemies to an absolute despair, and to the plot against His life which was consummated in the Passion a few weeks later.
But now He was more probably immediately desirous of working a miracle of this kind, in order, as has been said, that the fame of it might reach His Precursor in his prison, and produce his last effort to contribute to the glory of his Lord.
Selection of the circumstances
Although the miracle of which the narrative is to follow was thus one of those wrought more especially and singly for the purpose of attesting, in the most striking way, the Divine Mission of our Lord, it by no means follows from this that the instance of the exercise of His mercy which it contained was not also carefully chosen.
None of the circumstances were left to hazard. Thus, it was not in any place where our Lord was already very well known, and, as far as we are told, He did not re-visit Naim after the miracle. Thus the miracle had an air of entire absence of preparation or design. It might have taken place in any of the almost countless towns and villages of Galilee. The persons in whose favour it was wrought were, as it seems, unknown to the company of our Lord’s followers. They had nothing to plead for them, except the touching incidents of their case. Thus this miracle comes to be one of the most beautiful revelations remaining to us of the extreme tenderness and compassionateness of the Sacred Heart of our Lord.
Then, as it were, He had to choose a subject for a great work of mercy which was required for the evidence of His Divine power. He chose it, not in any conspicuous spot in the Holy Land, not in Jerusalem or in Capharnaum, not in the case of persons whose position would have given a greater publicity and splendour to the work He was to do, not in His own family, or among the relations of those most dear to Him, but He chose it by the wayside, as it were, among comparative strangers, and yet with the most delicate consideration for the circumstances in the case which called upon His ineffable compassionateness.
Continues in Part II.
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The Raising of the Widow’s Son
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Without the need of informality, Fr Coleridge manages to write as if he were sitting beside us, patiently explaining the Gospel stories and the beauty of every detail, showing how it reveals our Lord's definite character, goodness, and power. Such a pleasure to "listen" and learn, and recover a rare peace in these times.
I am really looking forward to part 2. Fr Coleridge really brings the gospels to life.