Sometimes the Sunday readings take an unexpected turn, and this week is one of those rare occasions. With All Souls Day bumping our usual Gospel reading, we’ll turn our focus to the poignant encounter between Jesus and the widow of Nain—a miracle packed with emotion, cultural resonance, and theological depth. Together, we’ll map the geography of ancient Galilee, unpack the significance of Jesus’s “gut feeling” in the original Greek, and uncover how the resurrection at Nain foreshadows the hope offered to all through Christ. Grab your seat at the city gate for a journey into the heart of Catholic philosophy, Jewish burial customs, and the promise of life that triumphs over death. (Mass Readings for November 2, 2025)
Diving deep into our Gospel we'll spend our episode looking closer at:
- The unusual abundance of reading options in the lectionary for All Souls Day—pages and pages including twelve Gospel choices and the freedom to choose from any Masses for the Dead, making this Sunday’s Gospel at your parish nearly impossible to predict [00:01:00]
- Why the city of Nain, the southernmost city in Galilee with a city wall and proximity to Nazareth and Mount Tabor, sets the scene for Jesus’s remarkable encounter [00:04:02]
- The cultural and theological weight of the Greek term "monogeneous" for "only son," often reserved for Jesus and linking our reading to deep Old Testament roots and John 3:16 [00:06:56]
- The precarious, often destitute status of a widow who loses her only son in first century Jewish society and the rare levirate marriage as one of her few hopes [00:10:03]
- How professional mourners, gender-based funeral processions, and suspension of Torah study reveal the magnitude of communal mourning customs in ancient Jewish funerals [00:13:18]
- What the Greek word "splanknon" means in describing Jesus’s gut-wrenching compassion, and how Catholic philosophy claims Christ, with unfallen nature, felt emotion more deeply than we do [00:16:35]
- The fascinating theology of the "preternatural gifts" Adam and Eve received—especially immortality and integrity—and how these shed light on the tragedy and hope embedded in death [00:21:04]
- Why Jewish law (Numbers 19) warns against touching the dead, and how Christ flips ritual impurity on its head by making the unclean clean, using only the power of his spoken word to raise the widow’s son [00:27:08]
- The subtle echoes between Jesus giving the widow her son and his own gift of spiritual life to his mother, Mary, at the cross, along with Old Testament and Canticle of Zechariah references to God "visiting" his people [00:31:59]
- The delayed resurrection of the body, explained through the catechism and the Eucharist as a "foretaste," and why Paul’s mocking of death signals our ultimate hope in Christ’s victory [00:39:50]
For the full show notes including citations and small group discussion questions, visit: kptz.io/AllSouls25
