God created the world out of love so that the world might live through God's love, and God could live through the world. However, for the world to live through God and for God to live through the world, the pinnacle of creation, mankind, was called upon to cooperate with God’s love. The God of love is naturally open to His creation, and even more so to mankind, the summit of all His creations. He fashioned mankind to be capable of equal openness to Him, as far as our created nature will allow.
Though God was grieved by mankind’s fall, it did not make Him forsake His plan for the creation of the world. God feels pity for us because His nature is love. Out of compassion for His creation, the Son of God became the Son of Man, so that He would be able to follow mankind into the realm of death itself and reclaim us through His death and resurrection.
No verb in the New Testament better describes God’s openness to humanity than the verb splachnizomai (to have compassion). Christ suffers with His creation, even to the point of dying upon the Cross, and His pity for fallen humanity and its tragic fate is closely linked to the mystery of His kenosis (self-emptying of His glory).
All of the Lord’s miracles arise from His deep compassion for those who suffer or those who love them. Especially in those cases where Christ restored someone to life, He did so out of compassion for the grief of those who had loved the departed one. He raised Lazarus from the dead to dispel the sorrow of his sisters, and He raised the son of the widow of Nain so that she would no longer have to mourn her only son.
Tradition tells us that Lazarus never laughed again, and most probably it was the same with the widow’s son. Anyone who has tasted joy or sorrow in the Other World can no longer laugh in the world we live in now. Yet, the love of Christ would bring someone back from the dead just so that those who had loved them would weep no more. After all, He sacrificed Himself on the Cross to ensure that no one would ever weep eternally.
Suffering can open a person’s heart, love for another can open it even more, and the pain of loving another opens our hearts most profoundly. This must have been true for the widow of Nain. Moved by compassion for her, Christ restored her son to life before she had even asked Him, because her heart had opened so wide in grief that she had come to resemble Christ Himself.
This was not the only miracle that Christ performed without being asked to do so in words. The wide-open heart of the grieving widow spoke directly to the wide-open heart of the God who had been wounded by humanity’s fall, and their silent communication was more than enough for the miracle to unfold.
Christ’s compassion moved Him to bring back the young man who had already passed beyond death, offering him as solace to his doubly grieving mother. Yet the greatest comfort of all – for both the living and the dead – is found in the Lord’s Resurrection. Christ comforted the widow of Nain, telling her not to weep as He restored her son to the life of this world, but the angel told the Myrrh-bearing women not to weep, for Christ, through His Resurrection, had triumphed over death once and for all.
Within the Church, we unite with Christ and with one another, so that both the living and the dead have a foretaste of His Resurrection. Hand in hand, as one body—both living and departed—we journey forth with song in our hearts toward the final Resurrection of all mankind, offering praise to the Triune God for His divine inspiration in creating a world of unceasing joy and love.
Sunday Luke III, 6.10.24.
Archpriest Dr. Georgios LEKKAS is a priest of the Holy Orthodox Metropolis of Belgium.
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