Soon afterwards Jesus “went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him.  As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out.  He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow…” (NRSV, Luke 7:11,12)

The widow at Nain had once counted herself a fortunate woman.  She lived in one of the most beautiful spots in the whole of Palestine.  Indeed, the very word Nain means beautiful or pleasant.  And well the village deserved it.  It snuggled in a cosy, green nest on the north-western slope of a mountain in Galilee, and commanded a sweeping and magnificent view.

Six miles to the north, on the other side of a broad valley, stands the hill of Nazareth and beyond that the country is seen to grow more and more mountainous until it reaches its climax in the vast snowy range of Mount Hermon which dominates the lofty skyline 120 miles away.  Round to the left – to the north-west and west – there stretches at one’s feet the green and fertile Plain of Esdraelon, the battleground of centuries, bright in the spring with wild flowers, until it ends, 18 miles away, in the white, precipitous ridge of Mount Carmel.  And, as one looks from Nain, to the right of Carmel, there is a gleam of blue on the horizon – the blue of the Mediterranean.

And there at Nain the widow had lived with her husband and son.  The first blow came when her husband died, but she still had her son, so she was not alone in the world.  But next her son too was taken and in a moment her life suddenly became empty and grey.  And so she took her place in the funeral procession to see his body laid to rest in a tomb hewn in the rock face outside the village.  The body, wrapped in linen grave-clothes with a separate piece wound round the head, was placed on an open bier.  In front there went flute players piping a dirge, then came the bearers with the widow walking alongside, and lastly the people of the village.  The beauty of the distant view only added to her sadness, for never again would her son share it with her.

But at the entrance of the village they were met by another crowded procession which had just toiled up the steep path from the valley below.  At the head of the procession was Jesus who had left Capernaum the day before, a distance of some 25 miles.  So the two met.  “When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’  Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still.  And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’  The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother” (NRSV, Luke 7:13-15).

Jesus came to Nain at that critical moment, not by chance, but in answer to the widow’s prayers, and in order to declare his “almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity” (1).  And that Divine mercy and pity has been shown no less for the spiritually dead than for the physically dead.  Of this the history of the Church provided a famous parallel in the conversion of St Augustine.  

His mother, Monica, a holy Christian widow, had the poignant grief of seeing her only son reject the Christian Faith and abandon himself to a loose and pagan life.  As he has written in his Confessions, “…thou didst ‘stretch forth thy hand from above’ and didst draw up my soul out of that profound darkness because my mother, thy faithful one, wept to thee on my behalf more than mothers are accustomed to weep for the bodily deaths of their children.  For by the light of the faith and spirit which she received from thee, she saw that I was dead.  And thou didst hear her, O Lord, thou didst hear her and despised not her tears when, pouring down, they watered the earth under her eyes in every place where she prayed.  Thou didst truly hear her” (2).

Yes, our Blessed Lord answered Monica’s prayers and tears, and touched Augustine’s heart and restored his soul to its spiritual life with God after it had been long dead in sins and unbelief.  And our Blessed Lord can still do the same today for lapsed sons and daughters of holy Mother Church in answer to the Church’s heartfelt prayer.  

Each generation produces its unhappy crop of lapsed communicants and worshippers.  The deadening influence of the outer world or of new and ill-chosen companions, does its fatal work, perhaps in the teens or early twenties, and the young people concerned are carried away to spiritual death and burial.  Their life with God, once so well-blessed and full of promise, has now prematurely ceased.  Baptism, Sunday School, Confirmation and Communion have led to nothing.  Religious impulses and the voice of conscience are stifled.  There is no longer any will to return to the former life with God; and even the ability to pray is lost.  Dead.  Now only Mother Church can pray for that help for which they can no longer pray themselves, and only our Blessed Lord can awaken their soul to life.

More often than not his call “I say to you, rise!” goes unheeded and disobeyed.  In the past they have received much from our Blessed Lord but now it all means nothing.  They have become hardened to the Gospel, insensitive to the supernatural and indifferent to or even contemptuous of the things of God.  So supernatural death sets in.  And there is a warning here for us all.  One can drift away from God so easily.  Each man and woman is ultimately responsible for the salvation of his or her own soul, and our Blessed Lord will force no one.  

But the Church’s prayers do not go wholly unanswered.  There are those in whom, perhaps when their youth is almost spent, the spark of spiritual life is rekindled, and is gradually fanned to a flame again.  Jesus touches their hearts and in response to his call, “I say to you, rise!” they begin that return to their life with God.  Like the widow’s son at Nain they “sit up”, and later will be able to stand again, firm in the Faith.  They “begin to speak” in prayer and penitence to God after a long, long silence.  And then our Blessed Lord delivers them to their Mother the Church, to be guided by her truth, taught by her wisdom, fed by her Sacraments and supported by her fellowship.

It is therefore our duty as members of the Church to pray for her lapsed sons and daughters and especially those who are personally known to us.  Christian prayer calls forth from God his awakening and enlivening power.  By helping to bestow that power on them, we are joining with our Blessed Lord in his work for the salvation of their souls.

References

1. From the Collect for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity: © The Archbishops' Council of the Church of England (2000) Common Worship Collects and Post Communions in Ordinary Time, Contemporary Language   Available from: https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-worship/worship/texts/collects-and-post-communions/contemporary-language/postwhit.aspx  (Accessed 02 June 2016) (Internet).

2. Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo (345-430) translated and edited by Outler, A.C. Confessions and Enchiridion, Book 3, Chap 11, Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library.  Available from: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confessions.pdf  (Accessed 02 June 2016) (Internet).