Luigi Pirandello wrote: «in the face of death, all blind! All blind! Death is that interval about which you can talk a lot, but the best thing is silence. Basil the Great suggested that "people's lives are fulfilled by passing through many deaths."
In today's gospel (Lk 7, 11-17) Jesus found a funeral procession, a place where hope, joy and the future are at stake. In fact, a widowed mother is mourning the death of her only son. Without the child, without the husband, there was nothing left. The condition of widowhood is the condition of humanity that engenders life for death. As dramatic as it may seem, the funeral procession is the reality we have all already been through!
What to do then? For Jesus this is the place of mercy! Mercy is being able to make a gesture where all gestures seem to be ended. The widow doesn't say anything, she just cries. Jesus anticipates: "Do not cry!" Love always takes the initiative, it always arrives before what is requested happens. The gestures of Jesus, “seeing, approaching, touching,” are the great inheritance of a God totally committed to life, at the same time sensitive to all suffering.
The wood of the coffin that Jesus touched is of the same nature as the wood of the cross! Both the coffin and the cross are the narration of a love story! For those who love, the end is not in the grave! Those who love always move to find the cracks of light, to not become paralyzed, to not lock themselves in, because, as the Song of Songs says, “love is stronger than death”!
Fr. Maicon