A visit to Place of Jesus’ Miracle

by Admin · June 16, 2015

BY FATHER BILLY BARNES

We were lucky to find it. In fact, we were just about to give up when I looked to the left and saw a small village on the side of a hill.

The painting of the raising of the widow�s son in the unused church at Nain in Galilee. (Photo:?G�nther Simmermacher)

I was sure I had seen it before on a previous visit to the Holy Land, when someone exclaimed: �That sign said �Nain�.�

So reluctantly our driver, who had never heard of the place � and, as it was getting late, wanted to go home�turned in and followed what looked like the main road of the village till he came to a tiny church opposite a small mosque.

There was a young woman there with a key the size of which could have opened St Peter�s in Rome, I�m sure! She was wearing no headscarf, was she Christian? No, it turned out she was Muslim, and her family had taken care of the unused church.

She opened the church for us without being asked, as if it was her duty. Was she recompensed in any way for performing this kindness? I don�t know.

There was a small plate in a prominent position in a very bare church. The plate contained a few scattered shekels. The church was small, barely the size of the sanctuary of most parish churches. It could have done with a good dusting, a coat of paint maybe, a little repair work here and there.

The altar was old-style, that is, the priest would have to offer Mass with his back to the congregation. There was no lighted sanctuary lamp, so we presumed that the Blessed Sacrament was not kept in the church.

No Mass in such a sacred place? The realisation provoked a little sadness, considering the stupendous miracle that the church commemorated: A young man raised from the dead while being carried to a specially prepared grave, his body moments away from being covered in earth, remembered till her death by a grieving widowed mother and then forgotten forever.

But no, this man was raised from the dead. His inert heart began to beat again. The blood pulsed through his veins again. Whatever caused his death was cured. And all of this had occurred because Jesus happened to be passing by.

Coincidence? Divine intervention? Godly compassion? The heart of Jesus melted at the sight of the broken heart of a mother.

Behind the altar was a large painting, artist unknown, depicting Jesus raising the young man, �the only son of his mother who was a widow�. The painting was held in a beautiful frame that lent even more glory to the work of the artist. I am no expert when it comes to art but that painting, in my humble estimation, would have caused quite a flutter at Sotheby�s or Christies.

We experienced a multitude of emotions that late afternoon�God�s love, God�s power, God�s mercy, God�s compassion. All these deserve the genius of a Michelangelo or Da Vinci.

This was a place to glorify God, to praise him, to love him, to proclaim to the world his majesty, power, glory and, especially, his concern for us.

We prayed after this experience that whenever we are in trouble, his path will cross ours and that he will be moved to compassion for a son or a daughter of his in trouble.

Before we left the church we each lit a candle, increased the scattered shekels by a few more, and said: �Shukran� (Arabic for �thank you�) to the young lady with the big key.

She had been joined by quite a crowd of young children gaping at the foreigners who had come to visit their little church which said so much (and so little) about God�s love for us and how he shares in our lives so unexpectedly sometimes. Or maybe he is always �passing by� at the right moment.