3rd Sunday of Luke - Miracles we do not see
Lord opens the eyes of the blind; Jehovah raises those who are bowed down; Jehovah loves the righteous; Jehovah preserves the strangers; He relieves the orphan and widow, but the way of the wicked He turns upside down. (Psalms 146:8-9)
When Jesus was living on the earth, preaching the Gospels, people believed in miracles. They believed because they were witnessing them, they were happening in front of their eyes. Also in the times of the Apostles people believed they were to be cured just by the shadow of the Apostles cast on them. And they were right. The Gospel did witness these miracles.
Well then in our days do we still believe in miracles? We see Benny Hin on TV healing with a touch of the hand and we ask ourselves is this a miracle. Not sure. We see other preachers on the same TV praying over a pile of credit card debts and we expect what? That the Holy Spirit will erase the debt of some foolish people? This is not going to happen. God does not perform this kind of miracles, He is not a magician. Jesus Christ performs miracles with a purpose, not just to please us. He has a reason behind everything He does. He wants to give us a lesson with everything.
Like the miracle today. He comes in the city of Nain and he sees this funeral going on. A young man, the only son of his mother is dead. And he's mother, a widow, in tears is crying not only because she lost her only son, but also because she lost all her earthly support. In that age a women without a man was nothing: nobody to work the land, nobody to protect her, she was completely desperate. So Jesus Christ seeing her is moved and raises her Son from the dead to alleviate her pain.
This miracle is not the only raising from the dead he performed. He called back to life the daughter of Jair, who just died, than Lazarus dead for four days in the grave and now this young man dead for a couple of days.
What do we learn from these miracles, what is Christ trying to teach us? Well we see that Jesus can bring back to life someone that just died, somebody dead for three days but even someone that started to rot in the grave. He has complete power over the death, and He proved this by resurrecting Himself after three days. He is the Master and everything, including death, listens to His voice.
He can do the same also when it comes to what we can call spiritual death. Spiritual death is a disease of the soul that renders us insensitive to the spiritual world, makes us blind to the beauty of the kingdom of heaven, makes us deaf to the choir of the angels, makes our heart to stop beating for Christ and our mind completely forgetting its own creator. And we sart decaying into sin without even noticing it.
But no matter how deep we are in this spiritual sleep, one day, two days or we are already starting to smell really bad, Christ can save us. He can come and say "Young man, I say to you, arise". He has the power to do this and He does this for many, even in our days.
For some he comes as a disease that starts weakening our body from the inside, and through the pain of the suffering He makes us understand that we have no power over life or death, that beyond the power of modern medicine is the true healing power of the true physician of our souls and bodies.
For other He comes with the power to take everything. Today I am rich, tomorrow I have nothing something went wrong and I've lost everything. Money, fame everything. But in these moment He comes and says, you have not lost everything yet, you have a soul redeem it from the grave and come and rejoice with me, you are not alone, weep no more, I am with you.
These are the true miracle that we do not see. We blame these things on everything: pollution, genetics, nanotechnology etc. But we fail to see these things as a wake up call. And most of the times we continue to live a Godless life, wondering why we can never find Him.
But true miracles happen every day, go to Greece in Aegina and listen to the stories about the wonders of St. Nectarios, go to St. Demetrios in Thessaloniki and do the same, Go to Jerusalem for Pascha and see the Holy light coming every year over the Holy Sepulcher. We are surrounded by miracles and we do not see them, because our mind is predetermined by the teachings of this world that wants to explain and dissect everything, even the mysteries of God. But this is not possible. We have to learn to accept that not everything is revealed to us because we do not need it all. What's the use of understanding the deep theology if we live in sin? We love the theory but we hate the practice.
So dear beloved, we have this chance to be brought back to life, to a true and pure life in Christ. We are given the second chance every day; we have to listen to it and listen well and listen now. We have to open our lives for the real miracles that happen; the fact that we still exist, despite our wrong doings, this is the greatest miracle of all. We do not need to see the people coming back from the graves to believe in God. We have the Gospel, we have the Fathers of the Church, we come hear and feel the Holy Spirit with our hole beings, why we need other scientific arguments? If we do not believe what we already have than there is no use.
Let us all understand that we are all widowed, if we are staying alone, outside of the Church. Outside we have nobody to help us, to support us, to understand us, we are on our own. Step inside the Church and you have everything: the people, the saints, the angels, the Theotokos and most of all Jesus Christ. This is why we come here to be in a community of love, to support each other in the harshest times and together to worship our greatest helper of all. Only in Church we are redeemed all as one. We have to get back to this and make it happen, it is up to us to let Jesus Christ be the missing link between us and the other. Weep no more, because Christ is here with us, now and forever and to the ages of ages Amin..