15th Sunday after Pentecost 5.9.10 Restoring things
Our Lord gives back the son to his mother. He restores life and the event occasions much joy, as we can imagine.
He had the ability to raise the dead and could have raised everyone if He had wanted to. He could have emptied out every cemetery in Israel.
But He does not normally restore life in that precise way.
He came that we might have life, and have it to the full. Usually He lets physical death take its course. He gives us life to the full, firstly by enabling the departed soul to reach heaven; and then at the end of time restoring the body to full glorious life - not the life of pain and suffering we encounter here, but Heaven in all its glory. Lazarus, and the young man of Naim, and the young daughter of Jairus – all brought back to life - would have had to suffer the same things as before. But in heaven all tears are wiped away; there is no more pain.
Our Lord is more interested in the life of the soul than the life of the body. To Him the greatest enemy is sin; whereas for most of the human race sickness would be a greater concern.
So when Our Lord comes across someone who is sick His first concern is for the person’s soul.
God creates and He takes pleasure in what He has made. He also likes to re-create; to restore things which have been damaged in some way.
We ourselves take pleasure in restoring things – be it houses, gardens, cars, books, works of art. There is a real pleasure in making beauty out of something that was distorted or corrupted.
If we are restoring something we will be meticulous in our approach. So is God meticulous in remaking man, His primary creation.
His mercy will forgive the sin and His grace will enable the person to rise above sin in the future.
He also can restore whole societies. As we worry about declining moral standards; about the loss of marriage and family values which threaten the foundations of our society – we can also extend the presence of Christ by living according to His word.
The more we cooperate with Him the more we restore the world from death.
The fight is essentially won through holiness of life, through our own absolute fidelity to the will of God, doing what He wants us to do.
This enables the holding on to the values we have, and recapturing them; and where possible reclaiming those who have abandoned Christian morality.
Our private behaviour must match our public declarations. Individual and communal behaviour must reflect the same values. Lots of people doing the right thing, in small things, everyday things – this will transform our communities.
We live in fragmented times; we must not be discouraged. Above all we must not go over to the ‘other side’ abandoning what we have held so far.
Avoid pollution, we are told, because it is the only planet we have. Far more so must we avoid the pollution of sin. The only way to save the planet is to live by God’s laws.
We can make this world truly beautiful by lives of holiness – which means simply living as God wants us to live. The ugliness of sin will give way to beauty, as death gives way to life in the raising of the young man.
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