“When Jesus was near the gate of the town, it happened that a dead man was being carried out for burial, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow…When the Lord saw her, he felt sorry for her. ‘Do not cry,’ he said. Then he went up and stretched out his hand on the bier and the bearers stood still, and he said: ‘Young man, I tell you to get up’. And the young man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him to his mother.” Luke 7: 11-17
On the evening of October 31st, many people of all ages across the world celebrate the festival of Halloween. While most of us trace its origins to the Western Christian liturgical calendar, some scholars suggest that it was derived from ancient Gaelic harvest festivals. The word hallow is derived from the Old English halig (holy) and in both Scottish and English was both an adjective meaning holy and a verb meaning to make holy. According to the Celtic calendar, a new year began on November 1st and the last night of the old year (October 31st) was regarded as “the night of all the witches”. The Catholic Church transformed this into the Eve of All Saints (Allhallow-even or Hallowe’en). In time, there developed a succession of three days in which people turned their thoughts with varying intensity to the ghosts of the past, the Saints of the Church and all their family members and friends who had died believing and trusting in God.
The Church’s liturgical calendar lists this coming Saturday as the Feast of All saints and Sunday as the Commemoration of All who have died with faith and trust in God (All Souls’ Day). Halloween has deteriorated into a largely commercial event marked with the sale of costumes, jack-o’- lanterns and sweets.
While, on this coming Saturday, we celebrate and salute all those who throughout the history of Christianity have been recognised as holy, all those whose holiness has been formally recognised and affirmed by the institutional Church, on Sunday, we remember all those family members and friends who have already died. We recall the good they have done and the inspiration and encouragement they have given us through their goodness, love and generosity. And we pray that, through the love and mercy of God, they will be welcomed into eternal peace and happiness, even though they have been touched, like us, with human frailty.
We call to mind that Jesus, in his lifetime, personified God’s gracious mercy and love in action. That mercy and love are offered to us freely by God, and without condition, and are certainly not able to be earned. In faith we pray that those who have gone before us will be open to accept what God freely offers all of us who are sisters and brothers to Christ and to one another.
The gospel-reading from Luke gives us the story of how Jesus, reaching out in compassion to a widow, grieving the death of her only son, restored to her the sole hope she had for survival and support.
It seems to me that Luke used this story of Jesus’ deep compassion to echo a story from the Book of Kings with which all in Luke’s community would have been familiar. It is the story of how the prophet Elijah, on the verge of dying of starvation, appealed for help to a woman who, with her young son, was also on the verge of starvation. As Elijah, exhausted by a long and arduous trek, entered the gate to the Sidonian city of Zarephath, he met a widow who was gathering sticks for a fire: “Please bring a little water in a vessel for me to drink”, he asked. As she was setting off to fetch the water, Elijah called out to her: “And please bring me a scrap of bread in your hand”. The widow’s reply was direct and firm: “As surely as your God lives, I have no baked bread, but only a handful of meal in a jar and a little oil in a jug; I am gathering a stick or two to go and prepare this for myself and my son to eat, and then we shall die.” But Elijah said to her: “Don’t be afraid, go and do as you have said; but first make a little scone of it for me, and bring it to me, and then make some for yourself and your son. For thus says the God of Israel: “Jar of meal shall not be spent, jug of meal shall not be emptied, before the day when God sends rain on the face of the earth.”
The woman went and did as Elijah told her, and they ate the food, she, himself and her son. The jar of meal was not spent, nor the jug of oil emptied, just as God had foretold through Elijah.
It happened after this that the son fell sick; his illness was so severe that, in the end, he had no breath left in him. And the woman said to Elijah: “What quarrel have you with me, man of God? Have you come here to bring my sins home to me and to kill my son?” “Give me your son” he said, and taking him from her lap, carried him to the upper room where he was staying and laid him on his own bed. He cried out to God: “My God, do you mean to bring grief to the widow who is looking after me by killing her son?” He stretched himself on the child three times and cried out to God: “My God, may the soul of this child, I beg you, come into him again!” God heard Elijah’s prayer and the soul of the child returned to him again and he revived. Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper room into the house and gave him to his mother. “Look”, he said, “your son is alive.” And the woman replied: “Now I know you are a man of God and the word of God in your mouth is truth itself.” (1 Kings 17: 1-24)
Centuries later, Jesus, full of hope and trust in God, and inspired by Elijah’s trust in God’s compassion and mercy, brought to God’s notice the plight of a widow in the town of Nain, who found herself in circumstances similar to those of the widow of Zarephath. Elijah, having revived the boy whom he had brought to God’s notice “gave him to his mother” and Jesus, having relied on the power of God to restore life to the young man being carried out for burial “gave him to his mother”.
In the prayers we pray for our deceased sisters and brothers on this coming Sunday when we thank God for their lives, for their inspiration and their goodness, we bring them in trust and gratitude to the notice of our loving God and thank God for all the good that has come to us through them.