There is a word for someone who has lost his or her spouse, and that is widow or widower.
There is a word for someone who has lost his or her parents, and that is orphan.
But for a parent to lose their child or children, there is no word for it.
There is no word for it because the pain of losing a child or children is beyond words.
In the 1st reading, the mother of seven sons saw all her sons died in one day.
Their deaths were also horrible and gruesome; they were tortured to death.
The mother was the last to die, after her sons.
Still, the pain and grief of seeing her sons go before her cannot be described or put into words.
But there is a word that would make us feel for that mother and her sons, and that world is “humanness”.
In our humanness, we are able to feel, to love, to understand, to be kind and gentle, to be reliable and responsible.
The parable in the gospel makes us think about our life and our response to God’s love for us.
Jesus came to show us how to be truly human and how to respond to God’s love.
May we remember that we are made in God’s image and to be truly human is our calling.