In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Today’s readings contain one of the most touching passages of the Gospels. It says that Jesus was moved with pity for the widow who was going to bury her only son: “When the Lord saw her, he was moved with pity for her.”

The text says that there were two large crowds who met: one was accompanying Jesus and the other was accompanying the young man to his burial. One crowd was following the One who is Life and the other one was following death.

On the front page of Wednesday’s Post, there was a sad news story about the accidental death of a young man in Arlington. He was 18. He got on a skateboard and held on to a pickup truck driven by a friend. At a certain point, he lost his grip and fell. “The 18-year-old was in the ‘prime of his life,’ his father said. His graduation was in just two weeks. Eager to go to college at Virginia Commonwealth University, eager to start working toward his goal of becoming a nurse. “All this, it happened so quickly, I couldn’t believe it,” the father said. “God works in strange ways.”

The most difficult situations that I have to face as a priest are when I have to preach at funerals like this one. I remember that one time I had to preside at the funeral of a young man who had died in the same kind of accident. He was the son of friends of mine. I was thinking, what am I going to say to these people? What can I say that could comfort them? Help me, O Lord! There is not too much to say. What I tried to do was to show total solidarity with their sorrow and bear witness to the certainty of the Resurrection. I prayed. I asked Jesus to be the one telling the family what they needed to hear at that moment.

Only Jesus is able to say: “Do not weep.” How is it possible to say “do not weep” to a mother who has just lost her only son? Only Jesus can say that because he is the Resurrection and the Life.

“God works in strange ways.” Indeed, God works in ways that seem strange to us. However, his ways are always the path to life, from death to resurrection. This week, I met a person who is a real sign of this. He is a seminarian of the Archdiocese who told me his history. His parents were about to divorce. They did not have any children. His mother was at the point of leaving the Church. His father was a fervent Catholic. One day at the end of the Mass, there was an announcement about catechesis meetings for adults promoted by the Neocatechumenal Way. His mother agreed to go to the meeting, as the last thing she would do before leaving the Church. That catechesis completely changed their lives. They had ten children. The oldest is the seminarian. His father was a firefighter in New York. On 9/11, he died while saving people. The seminarian was 15 at the time. He told me that he went through a really hard period. His father had been everything to him, his hero. He was asking God why He had done this? Why had He taken his dad? What would be of his family? He told me that this period of intense sorrow was a very fruitful time. He came to understand that if God took his father away, it meant that He was showing him that He really was his father. The young man said that he and his nine siblings never wanted for anything. Now that his mother is seriously sick, they are living with a profound serenity based on their faith. When the seminarian finished his story, I was really moved. I was thinking, here we can see what this Sunday’s Gospel is talking about, the experience of resurrection. God works in really strange ways but his ways lead us to the Resurrection.

After the resurrection of the young man in the Gospel, the crowds were amazed and were saying: “God has visited his people.” Let us ask for the grace of being aware of God’s visiting us. Let us ask for our faith to increase.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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