Today we have stories of two widows getting back their dead sons. Prophet Elijah had been with the widow for some time. Perhaps she had not yet recognized him as a man of God or it could be that she in her extreme pain or feeling of loss just forgot the blessings received in the past or being received currently. For the Prophet the act of reviving the widow’s son was his vocation for the day, which he himself did not know before.
Our vocation for the day is given on that day and not in advance.
Jesus had definitely a purpose for going through Nain and stopping at the funeral procession. The ultimate meaning of these two incidents is that God had cared for these widows and God wanted to have them to look into their lives all the more intently and perceive the depth of their call, and the privilege they had with God, and his immeasurable mercy and compassion for them.
We also find such profound intent and purpose of God with the life of Saul who was made Paul with a decisive intervention of God. We call such happenings in peoples’ lives as touches of God or miracles. We also perceive that in all such interventions, in addition to their personal redemption, both physical and spiritual, there is a hidden call by God for sending them on a mission.
Most of us may feel that we have not received any such extraordinary touch of God and so we are in no way special. The reality is that for God we are special, unique and with no plan B to replace or substitute us. Each of us is unique and only one of its kind and are being pre-loaded with a unique purpose by God.
If we do not recognize that purpose and fulfil it we fail God, and to that extent humanity is the loser. All the shortcomings, deficiencies and sufferings we find in human history, current and past, are because of the failures of us humans.
Hence we need not only to hear but listen, not enough just to know but need understanding, not merely to see but perceive, and we need not just be there but be active and proactive with creation, with humans, with the self and with God.
Look at today’s letter of Paul to Galatians; how much Paul struggles to make us understand how he happened to be in his mission for God, how he struggled to groom himself or God groomed him for it, processes God does with each of us in unique and custom-made manner!
Fr. George