JUNE52016

The Gospel of Luke was written in Greek and sometimes the English translation does not capture the intensity of the story the way St. Luke told it. The story of the widow of Nain is an example. The ordinary English translation says something like: “When the Lord saw her, he was moved with pity for her.” But in Greek the “moved with pity” is much more dramatic, almost visceral. To capture the feeling behind the word it might be better to say, “When the Lord saw her, he felt her pain like a punch in the gut.” Translating the text like that says two things to me: first, the humanity of Jesus. Jesus was not above it all, providing divine messages from some lofty perch. Rather, he was one of us who felt as deeply and as strongly as we do. The second lesson: when Jesus felt that punch in the gut he acted, he did something. So with us, when we feel that punch in the gut we should not simply double over in pain. We should, instead, act, do something, move to ease the pain we experience so keenly in our family, our neighborhood, our world.