Why YOU are the dead son of the Widow of Naim
The Prophets Elias and Eliseus raised the dead, but only with great effort and prayer. The ease of Christ's miracle teaches an important truth about the New Covenant and the sacraments.
The Prophets Elias and Eliseus raised the dead, but only with great effort and prayer. The ease of Christ's miracle teaches an important truth about the New Covenant and the sacraments.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…
How the ease with which Christ raises the widow’s son compares with that of the Prophets of the Old Testament
How it points also to the mystery of our own soul’s death in sin and its restoration by grace.
That the shadow of Mary and the figure of the Church as sorrowing mother deepen the mystical meaning of the miracle.
He shows us that the raising of the widow’s son reveals both Christ’s divine majesty and the pattern of conversion, by which sinners are restored to life in the Church.
For more context on the events discussed in this mini-series – and an odd connection between “the widow’s son,” Freemasonry and contemporary Catholic controversy, see Part I.
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
Remembrance of our Blessed Lady
A miracle so beautiful as this, of the raising of the widow’s son to life, has naturally suggested to pious commentators on the Gospel history a number of contemplations, by which the incidents related by the Evangelist are applied to that spiritual death of the soul, of which the death of the body is a figure, and to the restoration of the life of the soul, which is wrought by the grace of God in penitence, through the merits of our Blessed Lord.
Before examining these contemplations, we may remind ourselves first that, though our Blessed Lady is not mentioned as having been present on this occasion, it is not likely but that the thought of her, so like in her condition to this poor widow, and so soon to be bereaved of her only Son by the malice of His enemies, should have been present to our Lord at this time, and have added to the tenderness of the compassion which is assigned by St. Luke as the moving influence of His Sacred Heart.
She had been the actual intercessor with our Lord, in the case of His first outward miracle at the marriage at Cana, and she had been His instrument in the first spiritual miracle which He had wrought when a Child in her womb, upon the soul of His Precursor, St. John. It is natural, certainly, to think that the thought of her was also a motive power in the selection of this widow as the recipient of His bounty on this occasion—the first, as has been said, on which it is recorded that He raised any one from the dead.
He may well have seen her in the poor mourner who followed her only son to the grave, as she was to receive His own Body when taken down from the Cross, and to stand by when Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, with the other disciples, laid Him in the new sepulchre. She was also to be the first to whom He was to appear, when He had risen again by His own power, from the grave. In all these particulars, the shadow of Mary seems to rest upon this widowed mother.
Elias and Eliseus
It is well to remember also that the great instances in the Old Testament, in which similar miracles had been wrought by the great Prophets Elias and Eliseus, were like this miracle in the circumstance that they too were wrought in favour of widows.
And it is remarkable to notice the contrast which exists between the laboriousness, so to speak, of the miracles of Elias and of Eliseus, and the supreme and Divine ease with which this resurrection was brought about by our Lord.
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