Jesus went into a city called Naim: and there went with Him His disciples, and a great multitude. And when He came nigh to the gate of the city, behold a dead man was carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and much people of the city were with her. And when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said to her: Weep not. And He came near and touched the bier. And they that carried it, stood still. And He said: Young man, I say to thee, Arise. And he that was dead, sat up, and began to speak. (from the Gospel for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost)One of the greatest Italian writers of the 20th Century was Tito Casini, a firm Catholic, who suffered so much for the near-destruction of the Traditional Mass, and whose memory has been so neglected. It is impossible to read the Gospel of the past Sunday without recalling the words of one of Casini's most powerful texts in those tragic days of the 1970s, when all seemed lost:
It will rise again!... The Mass...will rise again! ...The bier -- and shall we renounce thus to believe and to act, to cry hopelessly about that which we loved so? It was thus, next to the bier, that the Naimite widow cried for her only son who was dead. But Jesus saw her and those tears moved Him, He got close to it, He touched the bier, and the dead man arose and sat up; and then he began to speak and [Jesus] restored him to his mother.
Thus Jesus -- for Whom there are no irremovable nails -- will restore to our Mother, the Church, the object of so much of His and our love: the Mass... for which the martyrs died... .
