Holy Compassion – St. Januarius
(1 Tm 3:1-13; Ps 101; Lk 7:11-17)
**********************************
Today’s readings, and liturgy honoring St. Januarius, present us with two miracles to ponder and appreciate, and a double message to absorb and live.
Interestingly, the two miracles involve a body and blood. The double message is clear and simple: be holy and compassionate, or in the words of the psalm, “walk with a blameless heart.”
Let us look first at the two miracles. Although Jesus performed miracles, he never performed miracles for the sake of doing so or simply to impress others. His miracles always had a purpose – to reveal who the Father is and who he is, and to empower people to both praise God and live full lives. Notice, Jesus never performed an appendectomy or repaired a broken tooth. His miracles involved the senses and were all purposeful: He gave sight so that the blind could see God’s marvels; healed the deaf so they could hear God’s word; healed the mute so they could proclaim God’s glory and healed the lame so they could walk in God’s ways. He never used his divine power for a selfish purpose.
Jesus raising the son of the widow of Naim
The first miracle we consider today is Jesus restoring life to a young man. Jesus had just healed a centurion’s slave in Capernaum. Soon afterwards, he went to Naim, a small community about 37 kilometers southwest of Capernaum. Here, the work of Jesus now progresses from a healing to a resuscitation, underscoring once more that Jesus is one of the prophets mighty in word and deed. Luke places importance on the similarity with Elijah, who gave life to the only son of a widow of Zarephath.
The prophet Elijah and the widow of Zarephath
This deliberate similarity with 1 Kings 17 adds strength to this incident, elicits the reaction of the crowd and demands greater attention to the details here. First, Luke points out that this is the only son of the widow. As a widow and now childless, she would be totally vulnerable and without support in that society. Second, he underlines the compassion of Jesus for her. Jesus saw her, took the initiative, came forward, touched the pallet and stopped the procession. He felt in his guts the plight of the widow. Third, whereas Elijah cries out to God and stretches himself three times over the child, Jesus simply gives an authoritative command, affirming the power of Jesus’ word. The narrator refers to Jesus as the Lord for the first time. Fourth, the crowd’s response identifies Jesus as a great prophet fulfilling the works of the great prophets of Israel, and for Luke, is greater than the prophets. John the Baptist announced the coming of Jesus as Elijah announced the coming of the day of the Lord. The hope of the resurrection is not grounded in the fact that the widow’s son has come back to life, but in the fact that the one who had the compassion to bring back the widow’s son has himself triumphed over death.
The second miracle we consider today is that of the relic of St. Januarius. Little is known about the life or martyrdom of St. Januarius. His fame is centered on a relic, said to contain his blood, that is kept in the cathedral at Naples. Early devotion to the saint was based on the belief that Januarius, an Italian bishop, lived in the 4th century and was martyred during the Diocletian persecution, but the records are unreliable. Early Christians kept clothing of martyrs soaked with blood as objects of devotion, and if possible, gathered blood in flasks, sometimes buried with them to indicate martyrdom.
Vial with the blood of St. Januarius
In the 14th century there occurred a phenomenon that was to attract curiosity throughout the centuries. The year was 1389. A procession was making its way about the cathedral when the priest holding the flasks containing the saint’s coagulated blood noticed that the contents began to liquefy and bubble. Since then the blood has repeated this phenomenon 18 times each year. The solid mass in the vial becomes liquefied, sometimes seeming to bubble and froth.
Even today the happenings provoke worldwide interest. The relic is an object of devotion and the activity is said to be miraculous. The cathedral is always filled to capacity when the resident cardinal or a priest holds the reliquary for all to see, being careful not to touch the crystal sides. The cardinal then announces, “The miracle has happened,” words that cause great joy and the chanting of the “Te Deum”. No natural explanation has been found for this phenomenon.
The fact that Januarius was a holy bishop and martyr connects with the double message to be both holy and compassionate. In his letter to Timothy, St. Paul gives sound advice to bishops regarding holiness: they are to be gentle, respectable, hospitable, teach well, unselfish and good administrators. Deacons must be serious, single-minded, sober, unselfish and faithful to the gospel. He even adds a few words of advice for women to be faithful, temperate and affirming. We can take to heart all that encouragement to be holy ourselves.
However, it is Jesus in the gospel who puts the spotlight on the most important virtue of all – to be compassionate as he and our heavenly Father are compassionate. A secular definition of compassion is a sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. A more spiritual definition would be to take into one’s self and to feel in one’s inner being the pain and plight of the other, and to provide comfort, understanding and emotional support to the other to the extent that one can. Sometimes that might be simply being present and listening from the heart. Sometimes all the other person needs, is to be heard and understood to find the strength they need to take them through their unique suffering that no one can take away from them.
One person who had all these qualities is Archbishop Emeritus Adam Exner OMI. As my spiritual director when I was a young Oblate in formation, he heard my story, discerned what I needed to work on to move forward, and asked me to pray with Isaiah 43:1-4 for a whole month. That passage, in which I truly heard God tell me that I was precious and honored in God’s sight because God loved me and not for anything I had done, was the beginning of my life-long healing journey. He taught us the importance of psychic presence when counseling others or directing them, and modelled that for us as he listened to the stories of countless others.
