Readings:

1 Corinthians 12:12-14, 27-31a
Luke 7:11-17

Reflection:

When a woman experiences the death of her spouse and later her only son, it is a devasting tragedy that brings inconsolable grief. This certainly was the case for my cousin who lost her husband and soon later, her adult only son to sudden and unexpected deaths. And this happens to so many women in the world today, and so often through war and violence. Today’s Gospel about the widow of Nain surely has that grief, but it would have been compounded by the social structures of the day which pointed to desperate future without hope.

In Jesus’ time – and in so many cultures throughout history, and still today – women were at the bottom of the social pile. A woman did not have legal protection or inheritance rights. Her protector was her father, and then her husband, and if widowed, her son. Without male agency, she had the prospect of being alone, impoverished and without hope. Jesus was deeply moved, no doubt out of compassion but possibly also though anger at the social attitudes. By ‘giving him to his mother’, he not only released her deep grief but gave her hope.

This incident occurs only in Luke and typifies the evangelist’s focus on Jesus’ compassion, on women and on the poor. This passage, like all of Luke’s Gospel calls us to do as Jesus did in our own little ways: meeting people’s needs with compassion and supporting the flourishing of women in our society which still bears much of the cultural baggage of the past.

John McGrath is a parishioner of St Brigid’s Marrickville.