Emulating the love of God

Bonsoir, buonasera, nos da, guten Abend to all reading.
I've been off the radar for a few weeks regarding posts on this blog - not for want of inspiration - but simply because what with finishing exams and working daily in my first part-time job, I've actually been busy!

Tonight I'd like to post, as I often do, about a few religious themes. At Mass this evening, the Gospel reading told of Jesus raising a widow's dead son back to life. 'Aha', you might be thinking, 'one of those ridiculous miracles that couldn't possibly be executed in real life because, you know, humans die and another human can't bring them back to life, no matter how much we may will it to happen'.

I may be playing the Faith card here, as so many Christians often do, but putting the historical accuracy of Biblical miracles aside, the "resurrection narratives" that are to be found in the Gospels, and indeed further afield in the Bible (see 1 Kings 1:17-24 for the prophet Ezekiel raising somebody's son to life). These miracles are central to the way in which Christians approach a crucial mystery of their faith - the resurrection of Jesus.

Perhaps the plausibility of miracles will be addressed in another blog post of mine, but for the moment, as I am dealing with this issue from a Christian perspective, I shall skirt the issue of the historical veracity of miracles simply to avoid complication in getting my reflections on this important theme across.

The impression that we gain from the Gospels is that Jesus was never afraid in his earthly ministry of upsetting the Jewish authorities of his time. He constantly irritated the Sadducees and Pharisees with his utterly radical way of doing things. He seemed a law unto Himself at times! In today's Gospel passage, we learn that Jesus touched the bier upon which the woman's dead son lay. This, to a Jewish mind would be atrocious because touching the dead was forbidden because it was thought to incur ritual impurity. Jesus nevertheless did it anyway. The motivation for Jesus doing this is not because this woman's son was important - indeed, he is not named; he was not, as far as we can gather a friend of Jesus', as Lazarus was. We don't even have any information that he had been one of Jesus' disciples. The  woman is a grieving widow who had just lost her husband and son (tragic not only understandably due to her grief, but also because it would mean subsequent isolation in a patriarchal society, rendering her role almost obsolete). Jesus was moved with compassion and pity at this woman's plight and he chose to help her. Compassion was his motivation for helping her. Saint Luke does not tell us whether this woman and her son thank Jesus after the miracle, or whether they choose to follow Him. Luke simply chooses to tell us that the people who witnessed the miracle saw a prophet in their midst. A prophet akin to Elijah. Someone special. Someone life-giving.

This is a wonderful story, displaying both Jesus' human and divine natures in perfect union. Jesus' human nature comes in the form of sympathy with another human. The compassion and pity that he feels, which we can often feel ourselves, were shared emotions of the human Jesus and he felt them for this woman and her situation. The divinity of Christ comes through the healing power of his miracle - raising the dead to life - something humans cannot possibly comprehend for it defies all laws of the universe that we know to be true. Yet somehow, by Jesus' healing divinity, it happened. 

What this story illustrates to me is the outpouring of love that God has for humanity. He wants so much to help us, and for us to understand how much we are loved by Him, even if we don't particularly show God that we love Him. In the Gospel story, God's love is instituted in the miracle that Jesus performs. The Gospel is getting the message of the capability of God's love, but we too are made in God's image, and we can emulate this love. Our version perhaps doesn't have to be so grand - it certainly doesn't have to be miracle worthy. We can strive for that, but God is surely just as happy with small acts of love. It can be seen in a stranger's smile, or perhaps a conversation with a friend over scones and tea. Any positive encounter that we experience with another human is an example of God's divine love. The actions may be small, but the sentiment behind them can be extremely powerful - love is powerful.

In our society, humans are too afraid of giving. We are often too afraid of revealing too much of ourselves, for fear that the clutches of society will grab our goodness and steal it away from us. I'm not advocating a pouring of one's heart out to the stranger on the street, but I think it would do society a great deal of good if we were all a little kinder, if we were all a little more positive, and if we all gave something to other people; friends, family, strangers alike. Our giving should be done simply out of the goodness of our heart, whilst not particularly expecting anything in return. That is the true meaning of a gift. And God's love is His gift to us, one which I think we should share with fellow humanity.


This post was inspired by both Fr Ian of the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Paisley, and Fr Andrew of St James' Catholic Church, St Andrews.