Tuesday,
September 17, 2019
24th Week in Ordinary Time
1st Reading:
1 Tim 3:1-13
Gospel: Luke 7:11-17
Jesus went to a town called Naim and many of his disciples went with him – a great number of people. As he reached the gate of the town, a dead man was being carried out. He was the only son of his mother and she was a widow; there followed a large crowd of townspeople.
On seeing her, the Lord had pity on her and said, “Don’t cry.” Then he came up and touched the stretcher and the men who carried it stopped. Jesus then said, “Young man, awake, I tell you.” And the dead man got up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. A holy fear came over them all and they praised God saying, “A great prophet has appeared among us; God has visited his people.” This news spread out in the Jewish country and the surrounding places.
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
While queuing for my turn to dip in the public bath at the Lourdes, France in 2005, I saw a young man wheeled to the same queue. The color of his face was gone. That man must have been as young as the man inside the coffin brought back by Jesus to life in today’s Gospel. The mother behind his mobile bed must have been a widow too.
I was curious at what would happen to him. Two extreme possibilities came to my mind. First: a miracle happens and he comes out walking on his own. Second: he dies after dipping naked into the freezing water. None of these happened. He came out of the bath in the same condition as before. Something inside me was protesting. If it was difficult for me to get to Lourdes, how much more difficult it was for him? How unfair that Mother Mary did nothing for him. If she had asked Jesus a favor for that boy, was it possible that Jesus played a deaf ear? Could Jesus do this to his own mother when he was so magnanimous to others like the widow in today’s Gospel reading?
My heart sank to my boots. I almost missed the glow in the face of the mother and the satisfaction with which she wheeled her son back to the grotto to thank the Blessed Virgin. A different miracle happened, not the one I expected. When we always look for the spectacular, we miss the glow of the ember of faith. Only a man of faith can see miracle where the faithless mortal finds disappointment. The man without faith is bound to find lots of disappointment in this world.
I lined up to dip in that public bath to ask for a secret miracle. The case of that boy changed my paradigm. I dipped in the bath asking for faith, not the faith that can move mountains but enough to make me grateful that I still can walk on both feet and move on my own. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.