Reflection

The gospel this Sunday is a very striking one. The participants in today’s narrative must have attended other funerals, but with what an amazing difference on this occasion. It was the great compassion of Jesus which moved him to intervene and perform what must have been a very awesome miracle. Death, that so final event, had been overruled before their very eyes.

Jesus is still in the business of restoring “life”. Physical death, though still something causing pain, is the threshold to another and fuller form of existence, this time, in the very presence of God, and for eternity. This is the promise which Jesus makes to us. In Christ we will never die because in him we are in Life itself. Like the dead man in today’s gospel, we too will hear him tell us to rise from death.  Death has, through Jesus, lost its finality; its sting has been removed.

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