Raising of the Widow’s Son.*
==================
Throughout the scriptures in the entire Bible, in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, we hear many stories about the miraculous power of God. In this gospel that I just read to you, we hear about the power of the Son of God Jesus to raise someone from the dead. And it's good for us to pray to God for miracles. And every one of us at some point of our life will ask God for some miracle. We want some miracle for ourselves, for miracles for others, perhaps a miracle for healing, or liberty from some addiction, or enslavement, or perhaps a miracle of healing of relationship that's broken. And we should pray to God for miracles, but we should pray to God for these gifts and blessings with tremendous confidence in Him with great faith and devotion to the Lord. But above all, we need to trust in the higher plan of God.
You know what happens to us is when we pray to God for various blessings and graces in our own lives and in the lives of others, we almost limit God's power to this world only. It's as if we want this and we want that, but we only care about our course in this world. We have to think about eternity. And we have to remember there is a higher plan that God has a plan for beyond life in this world that is eternal.
Our Lord has a plan that is eternal for every single one of us. And when we approach the Mystery of God with prayers and supplications for various gifts and blessings we need to have this trust in the higher plan of God.
Think about what happened in this gospel. Here we have a young man who has died, and his death has brought tremendous sorrow to his mother and probably to other relatives and friends . And then Christ intervenes in the situation, and he works this amazing miracle, and the man is alive again. And then after that, the miracle leads people to put faith in Christ . They become convinced that God is visiting His people in Jesus . And the fact that God has visited them, in Jesus, really gives them a sense of wonder and awe.
But think about this young man. He has died once. Now he's alive. But he's going to die again. At some point in his life, he's going to face more sufferings and crosses and he'll have to face death a second time.
Now can you imagine if that happened to you?
You're coming up to the end of your life with all of the sufferings and tormented that entails and you die. And then, Christ raises you up, you're alive again in this world and years later you have to face death again. And not only would he have to face death but people who knew him would have to face his death at some point again. But that miracle would have to lead that young man and his friends, to have faith in Jesus, to really believe that He is the Son of God, and what would be necessary for him for the rest of his life is to remember Jesus Christ. To remember the great gift of God visiting him personally in His Son Jesus. And when he would face any kind of suffering or hardship, he would need to hold on to that faith.
You know that in the Old Testament, one of the greatest challenges faces God's people Israel when their enemies say, Where is your God?" And in the Psalms this is made aware to us that the Israelites don't like that question, "Where is your God?" And what's necessary for us is to keep faith in the Lord because everyone of us at some point or another is going to face that question that leads to doubt "Where is your God?"
We cannot doubt. We have to respond with faith.
The young man might have had that same question when he faced death a second time: "Where are you Jesus?" He worked this miracle one time for me but "Where are you now?" And who knows what other difficulties he faced in life. But to that question, "Where is Christ? Where is God?," he would have to not respond with doubt, but to respond to that question with faith.
This is a challenge for us, to keep our faith, in Christ.
It's kind of interesting in the Gospel, that when Jesus sees or hears this report about the death of this young man, in a certain way he ignores it.
He says, "Do not weep."
Now can you imagine if you're going through some terrible difficulty, some hardship in your life that's weighing you down and someone comes up to you and says, "Don't worry about that. Have faith in God. God loves you. He has a plan for you. Trust in Him. "
Well you'd probably feel a little bit annoyed. You'd be like, "This person doesn't really have any sense of sensitivity to my situation. They don't understand what I'm going through. They just don't get it.
But you know, we have to be, more sensitive to the plan of God than we are to our own sufferings. This is a good lesson for us.
When things come into our life, which cause us to question God, to think about that question, "Where is God? Where are you now?"
When things happen to us that kind of lead us towards doubt in God we should ignore them as best we can.
We should pay more attention to Christ than we do to our own problems.
We kind of do the opposite, though. When all kinds of troubles come to us, we focus on the problems. And sometimes we want the whole world to know what we're going through.
We almost kind of develop an idol worship towards our problems. We think about them all the time. We post about them on Facebook or we try to get everybody to stop what they're doing and think about what I'm going through. That's almost like a religion, a false religion. We're saying our problems are so important that we always have to look to them.
No.
We've got to pay more attention to Christ than we do to our problems .
And St. Peter says in one of his letters that we have to pay attention to Christ as if we're looking in a lamp in a dark place . So much darkness can effect us, but we have to look to Jesus . If we don't, we're going to be looking toward the darkness, and we're liable to stumble and fall many times in our life, and many times, in many different ways.
How do we stay focused on Christ, when we're going through all kinds of things in our life ? Well the answer to that is prayer .
You know prayer is very, very important. Prayer is to the soul what breathing is to the body. We need to breathe. We need to pray.
Blessed Mother Teresa use to have the saying and she would say that:
Silence leads to prayer.
And prayer leads to faith, a deepening of faith.
And so think about these three things as a kind of rule for your own life.
Silence leads to prayer.
And prayer leads to faith.
Now the Catholic faith can be attacked it's been attacked non-stop throughout history. But the Church responds to that with teaching such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church which sets forth a teaching of the faith which is a short norm to know what the Catholic faith is.
So faith can be attacked. Prayer can be attacked when people try to say "Prayer is a waste of time." Or we might say that ourselves. We can say, "No we gotta be doing work instead of praying. But we can address that too by having a discipline life.
But here's something else that gets attacked that we don't often fight too well. That is Silence gets attacked. Think about these three things of Mother Teresa:
1.) Silence
2.) Prayer &
3.) Faith
1.) Faith can be attacked, we respond with True Teaching.
2). Prayer can be attacked, we respond with Disciplining our life.
3). But if Silence is attacked, if we have No Silence in our life, then our prayer life goes out the window, and our Faith weakens, and we might lose our Faith all together.
This is a modern problem, so much noise in our life. Now if you're watching this video, I know you have access to YouTube or to Facebook and sometimes we can become almost addicted just looking at the NewsFeed on Facebook or constantly browsing videos and posts and all things like that and Twitter. In and of itself media is good but if we are saturated in media and we have No Silence, the Silence is Attacked --it's done away with in our life.
Then our prayer is in trouble
our faith is in trouble
and the question: "Where is your God? will stump us and will lead us to walk in the darkness
And so here is something that we should try to work on is have this time in our life perhaps each day, yes each day which we have Time of Silence . A certain Time of Silence . Make sure we are not overwhelmed or flooded with media addiction or entertainment. Time For Silence so that We Can Pray and so that our Faith In Christ Will Be Strengthened that We Can Remain Focused On Jesus Christ Our Lord.
So brothers and sisters as we move along through the present circumstance of our life, whether they are good or whether they are very very difficult to deal with, let us renew our devotion to Christ.
Let us have that
1.) Silence that
2.) Prayer life, and ultimately that
3.) Faith
Mother Teresa went on to say that
Faith Leads to Love
Love Leads to Service and
Service Leads to Peace
May we have This Silence, which is like, The Foundation of It All so that We Can Have The Ability To Grow in our Prayer and our Faith and Become Right Now in our Present Circumstances :
Faithful Followers Of Our Lord Jesus Christ
In this way, whatever we are going through,
we shall realize that,
we are never alone,
Jesus Is With Us.
God Bless You.
11
b Soon afterward he journeyed to a city called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd accompanied him.12
As he drew near to the gate of the city, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. A large crowd from the city was with her.c13
When the Lord saw her, he was moved with pity for her and said to her, “Do not weep.”14
He stepped forward and touched the coffin; at this the bearers halted, and he said, “Young man, I tell you, arise!”15
The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.d16
Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, exclaiming, “A great prophet has arisen in our midst,” and “God has visited his people.”e17
This report about him spread through the whole of Judea and in all the surrounding region.==================
Throughout the scriptures in the entire Bible, in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, we hear many stories about the miraculous power of God. In this gospel that I just read to you, we hear about the power of the Son of God Jesus to raise someone from the dead. And it's good for us to pray to God for miracles. And every one of us at some point of our life will ask God for some miracle. We want some miracle for ourselves, for miracles for others, perhaps a miracle for healing, or liberty from some addiction, or enslavement, or perhaps a miracle of healing of relationship that's broken. And we should pray to God for miracles, but we should pray to God for these gifts and blessings with tremendous confidence in Him with great faith and devotion to the Lord. But above all, we need to trust in the higher plan of God.
You know what happens to us is when we pray to God for various blessings and graces in our own lives and in the lives of others, we almost limit God's power to this world only. It's as if we want this and we want that, but we only care about our course in this world. We have to think about eternity. And we have to remember there is a higher plan that God has a plan for beyond life in this world that is eternal.
Our Lord has a plan that is eternal for every single one of us. And when we approach the Mystery of God with prayers and supplications for various gifts and blessings we need to have this trust in the higher plan of God.
Think about what happened in this gospel. Here we have a young man who has died, and his death has brought tremendous sorrow to his mother and probably to other relatives and friends . And then Christ intervenes in the situation, and he works this amazing miracle, and the man is alive again. And then after that, the miracle leads people to put faith in Christ . They become convinced that God is visiting His people in Jesus . And the fact that God has visited them, in Jesus, really gives them a sense of wonder and awe.
But think about this young man. He has died once. Now he's alive. But he's going to die again. At some point in his life, he's going to face more sufferings and crosses and he'll have to face death a second time.
Now can you imagine if that happened to you?
You're coming up to the end of your life with all of the sufferings and tormented that entails and you die. And then, Christ raises you up, you're alive again in this world and years later you have to face death again. And not only would he have to face death but people who knew him would have to face his death at some point again. But that miracle would have to lead that young man and his friends, to have faith in Jesus, to really believe that He is the Son of God, and what would be necessary for him for the rest of his life is to remember Jesus Christ. To remember the great gift of God visiting him personally in His Son Jesus. And when he would face any kind of suffering or hardship, he would need to hold on to that faith.
You know that in the Old Testament, one of the greatest challenges faces God's people Israel when their enemies say, Where is your God?" And in the Psalms this is made aware to us that the Israelites don't like that question, "Where is your God?" And what's necessary for us is to keep faith in the Lord because everyone of us at some point or another is going to face that question that leads to doubt "Where is your God?"
We cannot doubt. We have to respond with faith.
The young man might have had that same question when he faced death a second time: "Where are you Jesus?" He worked this miracle one time for me but "Where are you now?" And who knows what other difficulties he faced in life. But to that question, "Where is Christ? Where is God?," he would have to not respond with doubt, but to respond to that question with faith.
This is a challenge for us, to keep our faith, in Christ.
It's kind of interesting in the Gospel, that when Jesus sees or hears this report about the death of this young man, in a certain way he ignores it.
He says, "Do not weep."
Now can you imagine if you're going through some terrible difficulty, some hardship in your life that's weighing you down and someone comes up to you and says, "Don't worry about that. Have faith in God. God loves you. He has a plan for you. Trust in Him. "
Well you'd probably feel a little bit annoyed. You'd be like, "This person doesn't really have any sense of sensitivity to my situation. They don't understand what I'm going through. They just don't get it.
But you know, we have to be, more sensitive to the plan of God than we are to our own sufferings. This is a good lesson for us.
When things come into our life, which cause us to question God, to think about that question, "Where is God? Where are you now?"
When things happen to us that kind of lead us towards doubt in God we should ignore them as best we can.
We should pay more attention to Christ than we do to our own problems.
We kind of do the opposite, though. When all kinds of troubles come to us, we focus on the problems. And sometimes we want the whole world to know what we're going through.
We almost kind of develop an idol worship towards our problems. We think about them all the time. We post about them on Facebook or we try to get everybody to stop what they're doing and think about what I'm going through. That's almost like a religion, a false religion. We're saying our problems are so important that we always have to look to them.
No.
We've got to pay more attention to Christ than we do to our problems .
And St. Peter says in one of his letters that we have to pay attention to Christ as if we're looking in a lamp in a dark place . So much darkness can effect us, but we have to look to Jesus . If we don't, we're going to be looking toward the darkness, and we're liable to stumble and fall many times in our life, and many times, in many different ways.
How do we stay focused on Christ, when we're going through all kinds of things in our life ? Well the answer to that is prayer .
You know prayer is very, very important. Prayer is to the soul what breathing is to the body. We need to breathe. We need to pray.
Blessed Mother Teresa use to have the saying and she would say that:
Silence leads to prayer.
And prayer leads to faith, a deepening of faith.
And so think about these three things as a kind of rule for your own life.
Silence leads to prayer.
And prayer leads to faith.
Now the Catholic faith can be attacked it's been attacked non-stop throughout history. But the Church responds to that with teaching such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church which sets forth a teaching of the faith which is a short norm to know what the Catholic faith is.
So faith can be attacked. Prayer can be attacked when people try to say "Prayer is a waste of time." Or we might say that ourselves. We can say, "No we gotta be doing work instead of praying. But we can address that too by having a discipline life.
But here's something else that gets attacked that we don't often fight too well. That is Silence gets attacked. Think about these three things of Mother Teresa:
1.) Silence
2.) Prayer &
3.) Faith
1.) Faith can be attacked, we respond with True Teaching.
2). Prayer can be attacked, we respond with Disciplining our life.
3). But if Silence is attacked, if we have No Silence in our life, then our prayer life goes out the window, and our Faith weakens, and we might lose our Faith all together.
This is a modern problem, so much noise in our life. Now if you're watching this video, I know you have access to YouTube or to Facebook and sometimes we can become almost addicted just looking at the NewsFeed on Facebook or constantly browsing videos and posts and all things like that and Twitter. In and of itself media is good but if we are saturated in media and we have No Silence, the Silence is Attacked --it's done away with in our life.
Then our prayer is in trouble
our faith is in trouble
and the question: "Where is your God? will stump us and will lead us to walk in the darkness
And so here is something that we should try to work on is have this time in our life perhaps each day, yes each day which we have Time of Silence . A certain Time of Silence . Make sure we are not overwhelmed or flooded with media addiction or entertainment. Time For Silence so that We Can Pray and so that our Faith In Christ Will Be Strengthened that We Can Remain Focused On Jesus Christ Our Lord.
So brothers and sisters as we move along through the present circumstance of our life, whether they are good or whether they are very very difficult to deal with, let us renew our devotion to Christ.
Let us have that
1.) Silence that
2.) Prayer life, and ultimately that
3.) Faith
Mother Teresa went on to say that
Faith Leads to Love
Love Leads to Service and
Service Leads to Peace
May we have This Silence, which is like, The Foundation of It All so that We Can Have The Ability To Grow in our Prayer and our Faith and Become Right Now in our Present Circumstances :
Faithful Followers Of Our Lord Jesus Christ
In this way, whatever we are going through,
we shall realize that,
we are never alone,
Jesus Is With Us.
God Bless You.