“And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her”
Dante describes Luke as the scriba mansuetudinis Christi, “the scribe of the gentleness of Christ”. It is not by accident that St. Luke’s Gospel is sometimes called the Gospel of Compassion and rightly so. The phrase “he saw… and he had compassion…” appears in several places in the Gospels and particularly in Luke’s Gospel. Somehow how we see leads to how we act.
This is almost the reverse of our age which tends to think of thinking as what follows action rather than what precedes or is implicit in each and every thing that we do. Thinking is more than reaction to actions; it is more than afterthought which doesn’t mean that it is simply predictive – a feature of the scientific world or at least one of its desiderata.
We meet in the angelic air of the early Fall and just after Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael and All Angels. The Angels are very much part of the liturgical and spiritual landscape of our thinking and praying. We are very much a part of a spiritual community – the host of heaven comprising saints and angels. Redeemed humanity finds itself in the company of angels – such is our liturgy. Unseen and yet known, the Angels belong to our thinking the good and refusing the evil; they are the ideas of God in creation. Perhaps it is with angels’ sight that we can best think about the seeing that is compassion, even the compassion of Christ.
Luke consistently links seeing with compassion but with the awareness that our seeing others in need does not always result in acts of compassion. “A certain priest” and “Levite” “see” but “pass by,” after all. Ten men were cleansed but only one “when he saw that he was healed” turned back “giving thanks” to the one whose compassion upon our humanity results in healing. In the parable of the prodigal son, the Father “saw” his wayward son returning to him and “had compassion on him”. Just so, too, “a certain Samaritan” who “when he saw him” – meaning the man who is in need – “he had compassion on him.” There is something important about the seeing that results in compassion and restoration; in short, salvation. And just perhaps it has something to do with angels’ vision.
The story of the Temptations of Christ read on The First Sunday in Lent ends that spiritual battle between Jesus and “the Devil”, “the tempter”, “Satan” – all three terms are used – with “angels com[ing] and minister[ing] to him”. Christ’s word-battle is with the one who is the fallen angel, the one who is defined by his opposition to the truth of his very being. To use yet another term, Lucifer – meaning the light-bearer – becomes “the prince of darkness” precisely because he exists in the denial of the truth of his being. In turning from the light he becomes darkness and the principle of sin and evil. The contrary is seen in Christ and his ministering angels. He and they are about a clear and precise sense of what is seen and known; in short, truth.
That extends, I think, to the ministry of Christ towards our wounded and broken humanity. God looks upon us and sees his Son in us. Jesus, the Son of God, enters into the brokenness of our world and shows us the divine compassion. Human knowing and divine knowing for us is not replaced by angelic wisdom but augmented by it. It is about who we are in the sight of God even in the face of suffering and hardship. It is about seeing clearly and truly in terms of who we are in the mind of God. It is to see as the angels see everything – seeing everything in God. That kind of seeing is itself compassion.
One of the most powerful moments in the Gospels about the look of compassion is again from Luke. It is the moment of Peter’s betrayal of Christ in the Passion account by Luke read on Wednesday of Holy Week. It is told so simply and yet so powerfully. Peter has just denied that he knows Christ three times and “immediately while he yet spake, the cock crew.” Then, as Luke says, “the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter.” No words are exchanged, just a look.
Sometimes a look says it all. The effect on Peter is profound. He “remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him; ‘Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice’.” And so “Peter went out, and wept bitterly.” What was that look of Christ? A look of contempt and condemnation? Or the look of compassion and understanding about the frailties and realities of the human condition. It seems to me that as in today’s Gospel it is about a look of compassion that leads to truth and restoration.
Here in this morning’s Gospel, Jesus and “many of disciples with him” come to a little city called Nain. They encounter a funeral procession on its way to the grave. “The only son of his mother” (who “is a widow”) is being carried to his grave. “Much people of the city was with her.” It is a poignant scene of communal grief and sorrow. For however individual all our sufferings and griefs are, they are also inescapably communal. Luke records with eloquent simplicity that “when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.” Everything follows from that look of compassion. It belongs to the gaze of angels but even more to the engagement of God in Christ with us in the very immediacy of our sorrows. The Angels look; Christ looks and acts, touches and speaks, precisely because he is the embodiment of the divine compassion in our humanity.
St. Michael and all Angels prevail against the Devil, against all that would define itself in opposition to God. But they do so, in the Christian understanding, only through “the blood of the lamb”, an explicit reference to Christ. It is about the power of divine goodness over and against every form of evil. We are part of an intellectual and spiritual community. As Thomas Aquinas, Doctor Angelicus, puts it, the Angels teach us not by supplanting the light of nature and the light of grace, human and divine knowing respectively, but by “moving our imaginations and strengthening our understanding.” Luke’s Gospel shows us precisely that. Our imaginations are moved and our understanding is strengthened by the story of Christ’s compassion. His look upon us in our liturgy is his compassionate grace towards us in our lives. Such, too, is the ministry of angels.
“And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XVI, in the Octave of Michaelmas 2017