Christian Widowhood

Extract

Ours is a culture which, by and large, does not talk about death. We prefer to focus on life. Widowhood too is something we tend to ignore. Yet widows have a unique experience of death and resurrection to share with us. As they grapple day by day with death and suffering, they more than others can teach the Church about the mystery of Easter. What follows is an exploration of widowhood in the Christian tradition.

First century Christians inherited a rich theology of widowhood from their Jewish past. Luke makes this clear in his stories and parables about widows. He portrays Jesus teaching us about giving God all we possess in the story of the widow’s mite (Luke 21:1-4). His hearers would recall the ancient (8th cent B.C.) story of the widow who shared her last scrap of food with Elijah, instead of hoarding it for herself and her starving son. She gave life while staring death in the face, and her love was rewarded by an unfailing supply of flour and oil throughout the drought (1 Kings 17: 7-16).

When Jesus entered the village of Naim and brought resurrection to a near-dead family by raising a widow’s son to life (Luke 7:11-16), onlookers would have recalled how Elijah, who worked in the same area of Galilee, raised a widow’s son to life in similar fashion: “Elijah stretched himself on the child three times and cried out to the Lord, Lord my God, may the soul of this child, I beg you, come into him again!’