하나뿐인 자식을 잃은 이 시대 나인의 과부(Nain’s Widow)는 수없이 많다. 독가스에 남편과 자식을 잃은 시리아의 어머니, 백인 경찰에게 자식이 죽임을 당한 미국의 흑인 어머니, 집에 오는 길에 갱에게 강간당하고 죽은 딸을 가진 인도의 어머니, 불법적으로 해고당하고 고통과 불안 속에서 자살한 아들을 둔 한국의 어머니. 어머니는 자식을 무덤에 묻지 않고 가슴에 묻고 항상 그것을 가지고 다닌다…
Nain’s Widow (Luke 7,11-17)
In the year of 2011, I lost two friends who grew up together in the same parish. One died of cancer and the other of an accident. They were so young that everyone was shocked to hear the tragedies. But, none of us was torn apart by sadness like their mothers. They seemed to lose everything, even reason to live. Since then, it has been more than two years, and yet the tears of the mothers are still there. Mother buries her child not in a grave but in her heart and carries out all the time.
Everyday I sadly see pain and sorrow of Nain’s widow in the Gospel who lost her only child and on the way to bury him. A mother in Syria whose husband and children were killed by a poisonous gas, a mother in Egypt whose son was disappeared in a demonstration, a mother in USA whose black son was shot to death by a white cop, a mother in India whose daughter was raped by a gang on her way home, a mother in South Korea whose son was illegally laid off and committed suicide because of angst and stress. These mothers are modern day Nain’s widows who lost everything and nothing left.
What would you say? What can you do? Do you feel sadness and helplessness? I would like to call it sympathy or pity. Jesus had the same feeling, when he saw the widow, that he was moved by pity for her. Having pity for the weak, especially for the modern day Nain’s widows is a first important step because the pity will move people to step forward and touch the untouchable, that is, the coffin, the symbol of tragedy and death. People are afraid of getting to be related to tragedies and of touching it. So touching the taboo takes lots of courage.
I dare to ask you to touch the untouchable and speak in your heart, “Young man, I tell you, arise!” It is not a test if you have an ability to raise the deceased. But it is a sympathetic prayer all we can do in the face of tragedies. What a praying person needs is to leave everything up to God in prayer, trusting the Lord’s saying, “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you” (Isaiah 49,16). This is what we believe that the heart of God is full of mercy and love. Therefore we stand by the modern day Nain’s widows in the trust of the merciful Father.