ON THE THIRD DAY
1. The Mount of Olives, familiar to most Christians as the starting point for Jesus’ jubilant procession into Jerusalem, its Garden of Gethsemane, and later his ascension to the right hand of God, proves to be the dramatic setting for still another miraculous event in salvation history. Lazarus, a friend of Jesus, becomes ill at his home in Bethany, a village situated on the east slope of the Mount of Olives (about two miles distant from Jerusalem).
2. His sisters Mary and Martha send an intimate, revealing, yet discreet message to Jesus who is some distance away: "Lord, he whom you love is ill." [Jn 11:3] Their words, spare and eloquent, witness their belief in Jesus' lordship and express feelings of tenderness and worry. For his part, Jesus mysteriously chooses to linger beyond the region of Judea, thereby giving full reign to the finality of Lazarus’ death. On the third day, approaching his decisive rendezvous at the cave in which his dear friend is interred, Jesus becomes deeply emotional.
PICTURE OF HEALTH
3. A number of years ago, late summer, I stood inside a small and complex ecosystem. I felt its cool atmosphere to be heavy and solemn. Not entirely quiet, the little grotto echoed with curious noises--the sound of sighing and varied little chirps. Intrusive voices disturbed its peace, however, which seemed to me disrespectful.
4. The cave was a small room in the intensive care unit of a nationally known cancer center. The sighing came from a mechanical respirator, the chirping noises were beeps from a heart monitor and other equipment. These things sustained a dear friend and fellow seminarian on life-support. He was only 32 years old. His name was Jim. Only a few days earlier, he was the picture of health. A devastating leukemia cut him down within the span of one week, a brain hemorrhage the cause of death.
UNINTERRUPTED CRY
5. I went straight to the hospital from the airport. I talked to Jim by phone from Toronto scarcely two days before, but I did not know what to expect. Lying there in his bed, he seemed to be resting. I could not grasp that he was clinically dead, that he would never open his eyes, or smile or get up again. My eyes saw what I wanted to see. What the nurses told me I did not want to hear. All I could trust was my faith in God. I asked God for more. I prayed to God saying, The victory is yours, help me to see with eyes of faith.
6. I prayed in vigil at Jim’s bedside throughout the night. (His family chose not to stay for reasons I will never understand.) I was there in the morning when the medical staff disconnected his life support. The sighing of the respirator stopped. The rhythmic up-and-down movement of Jim’s chest ceased. The color of his complexion darkened immediately. The chirping of the monitor went on a dreadfully long time, going slower and slower until the alarm sounded in one long uninterrupted cry.
SENSE OF THE SACRED
7. The nurses graciously let me stay for a while longer. I was grateful to God for the hours I stayed at Jim’s bedside. As I sat next to his lifeless body, I was so thankful for the silence. I was deeply moved by a sense of the sacred, that this hospital room, this grotto, was the place where God received the soul of a young man who loved him and had the heart of a priest. I was awed by the mystery of life and death, though at the time I scarcely could acknowledge my soul’s awareness of this. I had no words to explain nor did I desire to try.
8. Contemplating the story of Lazarus, my thoughts to turn to Jim and human powerlessness to wake him from unending sleep. I sometimes asked God to show me how Jim's death was a fruitful part of his divine plan. How was his death a sign of the miraculous good that God wills to accomplish in my own life? I suppose this is the universal and mostly unspoken plea of families whose loved ones die tragically and young.
“IN THIS DARKNESS”
9. Mary and Martha lost their brother for reasons Sacred Scripture does not reveal. Most certainly, the cause of Lazarus’ death paled in importance before the cause of his rising from the dead, Jesus. In sorrow, Mary laments, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." [Jn 11:21] We cry for Lazarus, for our beloved deceased and for ourselves.
10. The experience of physical death is not the only condition which enables one to identify with the inhumation[2] of Lazarus. It is possible, for example, for one to be in an emotional tomb, trapped and imprisoned within himself. One may even feel that he is perishing inside, his fortunes adrift like the falling leaf, his melancholic face a gravestone:
IT IS in this darkness when there is nothing left in us that can please or comfort our own minds, when we seem to be useless and worthy of all contempt, when we seem to have failed, when we seem to be destroyed and devoured, it is then that the deep and secret selfishness that is too close to us to identify is stripped away from our souls. It is in this darkness that we find liberty. It is in this abandonment that we are made strong. This is the night which empties us and makes us pure. [3]
FEARFUL DISCIPLES
11. Delaying his return to Bethany in Judea, Jesus prepares to contend against the principalities and powers of death. [cf. Eph 6:12] “This illness,” he says, “is not unto death; it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by means of it.” [Jn 11:4] His disciples, fearing that he could be arrested by the religious authorities, beg him not to return to Judea. If Lazarus is only asleep, they observe, would it not be foolish to risk death by traveling to Bethany?
12. Lazarus is dead [cf. Jn 11:14], Jesus responds emphatically, and if you wish to discover the hidden meaning this death has for you, come with me. The apostle Thomas begrudges ironically what only John will honor at Golgotha: "Let us also go, that we may die with him." [Jn 11:16] As Jesus approaches his friend’s grave site, he is "deeply moved in spirit and troubled". [Jn 11:33]
PRAYERFUL THANKS TO GOD
13. The shadow of impending crucifixion looms over Jesus. He weeps for Lazarus, for his people, and for himself. However, it must be asked, why did Jesus not cure Lazarus at the moment he received the sisters' urgent message as he had done for others? Why the delay in setting out for Bethany? It is not possible to know the practical answers to these questions, but there are extraordinary spiritual realities which, when taken into consideration, provide important lessons, not the least being the height and depth of God’s incomparable mercy.
14. That Lazarus had died could not be contested. Jesus would overturn his death as a sign of God’s glory and moreover, in the presence of many witnesses. Jesus offers prayerful thanks to God before summoning the dead man in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out! [cf. Jn 11:43] The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke relate that, preceding the moment of his death by crucifixion, Jesus cries out with anguish and suffering. The evangelist John, however, relates that Jesus consummated his earthly life and ministry by a simple passion proclamation, It is finished. [cf. Jn 19:30] Tellingly, John situates Jesus in front of Lazarus tomb in the act of crying out. Lazarus is delivered from the grip of death.
BREATHTAKING GLORY
15. In John's gospel, Jesus' public ministry culminates with the Lazarus miracle. The raising of Lazarus is conclusive proof of Jesus' power over life and death, the definitive prophecy of his own resurrection from the dead, the height and depth of God's incomparable love for his fallen creatures. The summons to life must triumph over the lament of death. Jesus reverses his disciples’ expectations by revealing God's breathtaking glory with confidence and assurance, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.” [Jn 11:41]
16. The important aspects of the gospel’s Lazarus story are many, each offering a marvelous opportunity for prayer and self-reflection, for example the large stone covering Lazarus' tomb signifying death’s finality, and Jesus’ delay in helping Martha and Mary in their greatest need. Yet the mercy of God has come to Martha’s and Mary’s household in all its power.
DIVINE LIBERALITY
17. Lazarus whose name means one whose help is in God rises at a word of command. The Lord’s own resurrection from the dead will be the power that shatters death forever. Never again will mortality devour human spirits. Jesus' ministry, attested by the unprecedented event of Lazarus’ return to life, signals that the favorable time in salvation history is now, in the present age, for all who hear the gospel of life.
18. We may confidently assert, therefore, that far from being distant and unapproachable, the Lord is very near to his people. Never sparse and inconstant, God’s mercy is extravagant and never-ending. The raising of Lazarus is a joyful experience of divine liberality in the sight of God’s people, the proof of the divine physician’s merciful love.
“CUP OF SALVATION”
19. How can one respond to God’s prodigal mercy? Jesus himself told a man following his spectacular cure, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” [Lk 8:39] The psalmist asks “What shall I render to the Lord for all his bounty to me?” Answering his rhetorical question, he acknowledges God’s care for his elect and his own obligation within the assembly of believers:
I WILL lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord, I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. [Psa 116:12-15]
20. Thus everything, whether momentous or trifling, diminutive or Herculean, slave or emperor, exalted or reviled, the God of heaven and earth rules. It is the Lord’s loving-kindness that penetrates furthest reaches of the metaphysical frontier. For whatever God wills into existence, meditates upon, searches out, loves and receives—whether seen or unseen, known or not known—is his Kingdom.
AUTHORITATIVE WORD
21. Mercy is Christ’s invincible weapon "against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places". [Eph 6:12] Fortunately death does not have the last word for the Christian believer who faithfully follows the light of Christ. [cf. Jn 11:9] The final, authoritative word of the Christian story is the resurrection.
22. Our Lord, who died on the cross two thousand years ago, was a single grain of wheat cast into the fertile soil which he himself prepared. [cf. Jn 12:24] As the first fruits of the resurrection, Jesus Christ enables all Christians to share in the bountiful harvest of his passion, death and resurrection. This is why the bells ring at the Vigil of Easter during the singing of the Gloria: "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?" [Jn 11:25-26]
[2] Cf Anthony Bloom, excerpted in A LENT SOURCE BOOK: THE FORTY DAYS, eds. J. Robert Baker, et al., vol. 2 (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1990) 138. "'Humility' comes from the Latin word humus which means fertile ground. The fertile ground is there, unnoticed, taken for granted, always there to be trodden upon. It is silent, inconspicuous, dark, and yet it is always ready to receive any seed, ready to give it substance and life....It is so low that nothing can soil it, abase it, humiliate it; it has accepted the last place and cannot go any lower."
