“And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.”
Today’s Gospel is a powerful and moving illustration of what Paul means by our “being rooted and grounded in love.” The compassion of Christ is the deep love of God in himself and for us. Thus these readings illuminate the theme of the Trinity season captured in the Scripture phrase for the Trinity season: “God is love and he that abideth in love abideth in God and God in him.” In a way, the entire project and purpose of the Trinity season is about our circling around and into the divine mystery of God’s love, seeking that love as the moving principle in us.
To understand the compassion of Christ shown in the Gospel story of the widow of Nain is “to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.” It might seem paradoxical: to know what is beyond our knowing. Yet that is the great philosophical insight: our knowing is always about what is greater than us. Our knowing is finite and partial but belongs to the greater knowing of God. Knowing and loving go together which is itself another challenge for us: to see the connection between knowledge and love is to be awakened to the deeper and greater reality of God in his ultimate being, ultimate knowing and ultimate loving. Such is the mercy that never ends and as such it is the “continual pity” of God which alone can “cleanse and defend” God’s Church. That “continual pity” is the compassion of God made visible in Christ.
Luke provides the greatest number of Gospel readings in the Trinity season. Dante, in a wonderful phrase, identifies Luke as scriba manseutudinis Christi, the scribe of the gentleness of Christ. That gentleness is the compassion of Christ. Thus, Luke’s Gospel is sometimes called the “Gospel of Compassion” because of the touching and compelling scenes and stories which his Gospel highlights. Luke alone, for example, gives us the stories of the Good Samaritan, the prodigal son, and the widow of Nain.
All three turn on the idea of seeing that leads to compassion. In the parable of the good Samaritan, the certain Samaritan “when he saw him [the certain man, the symbol of our humanity, lying wounded and half dead on the roadside], he had compassion on him.” In the story of the prodigal son, it is the father who when his son “was at a distance, saw him and had compassion.” And Jesus coming to the gate of the little city, Nain, meets the funeral procession of the only son of the widow of Nain as they proceed to the graveside. “And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.”
Compassion means to be moved in the core of our being. It is more than an emotion, a feeling. Here in the Gospels we are meant to learn that it is something more and greater than us, more than what arises simply from our humanity in itself. Like the Church, as the Collect suggests, we “cannot continue in safety without thy succour,” without divine aid; in short, without God’s “continual pity”. The point stressed by Luke is that compassion is not passive but active. What is active in us is the love of God in Christ.
And so in the parable of the Good Samaritan, it is not just that the certain Samaritan sees the man wounded by the wayside and has compassion but that he “went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.” The whole scene, as the Fathers of the Church stress, points to the sacramental life of the Church, to the cure of souls which is about the compassion and care of God alive in us towards one another. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the father seeing his son returning home, does not just see him and has compassion but “ran and embraced him and kissed him.” There is celebration and joy, for “this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.”
And so here in this story, Jesus does not just see and feel compassion, he says “unto her, Weep not.” He reaches out and touches the bier upon which her son lies and says, “young man, I say unto thee, Arise.” And, then, “he delivered him to his mother.” The compassion of Christ in all these stories is the active love of God as the moving principle in us. It is not a human construct but divine love perfecting and moving in the inmost core of our being, the divine love which belongs to God as love, the mutual and indwelling love of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the dynamic love of the Trinity. We are embraced in that love.
We are opened out to the love “which passeth knowledge.” It is not a human construct, a product of ourselves. It is the realization of a principle greater than ourselves that is given to us, grace perfecting but not destroying human nature. In all of these accounts in Luke’s Gospel, this results in awe and wonder, in joy and gladness. There is rejoicing at the return of the prodigal son even in the face of the resentment of the elder son to whom the father says that “it was meet that we should make merry and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found,” an echo of what the father said to his wayward but returning and repentant son. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the lawyer is compelled by the story to recognise that this compassion is the love of neighbour even as it is the love of God. As such it belongs to what he seeks even in spite of himself in his skepticism, “eternal life.”
The raising of the son awakens awe and wonder. “There came a fear on all, and they glorified God.” There is the recognition that this is something beyond our humanity, namely that “God hath visited his people.” Yet there is the recognition, too, of the shortcomings of our knowledge. At this point in Luke’s Gospel our recognition of Christ is partial and incomplete. We don’t fully get it. The community of mourners in Nain think “that a great Prophet is risen up among us, and that God hath visited his people,” as if here today and gone tomorrow. The deeper truth which Paul seeks for us to know is about the abiding love of God in himself and about our abiding in that love, “he in us and we in him,” as our liturgy says.
Such is the deeper meaning of the compassion of Christ. The knowledge of the love of Christ which passeth knowledge is the divine love which is greater than our human knowing and loving. The pattern of death and resurrection is the movement of that divine love in us which seeks our perfection and our holiness in God. Thus the pattern of death and resurrection shown in these stories from Luke is the movement of Christ’s compassion in us.
“And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 16, 2023