The actions of Jesus, interrupting this ritual of mourning, are then quite terribly cruel if not for the fact that He is the One who created life in the first place, and further, He has come to birth the new world from His own body and blood. Telling a grieving widow to ‘Weep not,’ while pushing past her to touch the unclean death box being purged from the village; thereby, making Himself unclean in the process—all because he had compassion on this grieving widow—gives us a window into God the Son’s entire mission to save the world. As St. Paul tells us in his 2nd letter to the Corinthians: Jesus, who knew no sin became sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus embraces death itself so that we can be freed from sin and death in a transformation just as shocking and incredible as compelling a dead boy to return to his mother’s side. Through the Cross, our Lord covers Himself in the unclean death acts of the world, for on the first Good Friday, Jesus will literally take this boy's place in the tomb and cause His own blessed widowed mother to grieve as humanity rips her precious and perfect son apart. Here is the great and terrible price of the end of death—the price of wiping away all tears, the price of saying ‘Weep not.’ Justice demands a sacrifice; Love provides a Savior.