When he died, a big part of her died too. He was her only son, and she was also a widow. Now she was alone; imagine her pain. We hear about her in our gospel, but we don’t hear much. What was her name and how long had she been a widow? How did her son, her sole protector and provider, die? Was it sudden or had she spent her days caring for him?
What a sad scene it must have been: a crowd of people making their way down a narrow street in a funeral procession listening to her cry. Her grief must have been overwhelming, but she did not go unnoticed.
Jesus saw her crying and was moved with compassion. Making his way through the grief-stricken crowd, he went over to the coffin and gently said: “Young man, I tell you, arise.” Imagine this woman’s incredible joy when her son sat up. In that moment, Christ’s compassion changed this poor widow’s life, her son’s life, and the lives of the crowd.
Compassion is surely a quality needed in our time. The word ‘compassion’ means ‘to suffer with’, to be conscious of others’ distress and to have a desire to alleviate their suffering. It’s the ability to be present to someone in need, to be tender and kind. We may not be able to perform miracles like Jesus did, but we are still called to ‘suffer with’ others. In their suffering, as followers of the compassionate Christ, we see the face of God.
One such person who helped others in the depth of their pain was a Catholic pharmacist from Poland named Tadeus Pankiewicz (pan-KYE-vitch). While on our recent parish pilgrimage to Krakow, Poland last week, the 34 of us learned that he owned the only pharmacy, which we saw in the area’s Square. That Square soon became Krakow’s walled Jewish Ghetto during the Nazi occupation in WW II. Between 20,00 – 30,000 Jews were forced to live there in crowded conditions. Tadeus insisted on staying there to operate his store and even bribed the German officials to do so. He became the only non-Jewish Pole in the ghetto.
From his shop window on this Square, this pharmacist observed and recorded the horrors that happened there to the Jewish people, including brutal beatings and rounding them up for their long walk to the death camps. Also, “His pharmacy became a place of refuge for many of the inhabitants of the ghetto, where he provided them with advice and much-needed medicines, often free of charge. A number of people also managed to escape through the back entrance of the pharmacy. His actions were not without risk to himself: had he been caught he would have been shot immediately.”
He did survive, however, and after the war, he wrote his memoirs in a book called ‘The Krakow Ghetto Pharmacy”. He was recognized by the Jewish community for all his courageous actions with the distinguished title “Righteous Among the Nations”. His pharmacy store is now a museum.
Christ and Tadeus Pankiewicz were compassionate to those in their immediate presence. Sometimes, those in front of us may try our patience, can be annoying, or disrupt our schedules. By showing them Christlike compassion, however, like that shown to the widow and the Holocaust victims, hearts and lives are changed, and we are helping to repair our broken world with kindness, one person at a time.
