March 29^th 2020. Fifth Sunday of Lent

GOSPEL: John 11:3-7, 17, 20-27, 33-45

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini broadcast on Vatican Radio

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Don Fabio’s homily follows the Gospel

GOSPEL: John 11:3-7, 17, 20-27, 33-45

The sisters Martha and Mary sent this message to Jesus, ‘Lord, the man you love is ill.’ On receiving the message, Jesus said, ‘This sickness will not end in death but in God’s glory, and through it the Son of God will be glorified.’

Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, yet when he learned that Lazarus was ill he stayed where he was for two more days before saying to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judaea.’

On arriving, Jesus found that Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days already. When Martha heard that Jesus had come she went to meet him. Mary remained sitting in the house. Martha said to Jesus, ‘If you had been here, my brother would not have died, but I know that even now, whatever you ask of God, he will grant you’.

‘Your brother’ said Jesus to her, ‘will rise again.’

Martha said, ‘I know he will rise again at the resurrection on the last day.’

Jesus said: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. If anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?

‘Yes Lord,’ she said ‘I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who was to come into this world.’ Jesus said in great distress, with a sigh that came straight from the heart, ‘Where have you put him?’ They said, ‘See how much he loved him!’ But there were some who remarked, ‘He opened the eyes of the blind man, could he not have prevented this man’s death?’ Still sighing, Jesus reached the tomb; it was a cave with a stone to close the opening. Jesus said, ‘Take the stone away.’ Martha said to him, ‘Lord, by now he will smell; this is the fourth day.’ Jesus replied, ‘Have I not told you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. Then Jesus lifted up his eyes and said:

‘Father, I thank you for hearing my prayer.
I knew indeed that you always hear me, but I speak
for the sake of all these who stand round me,
so that they may believe it was you who sent me.’

When he had said this, he cried in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, here! Come out!’ The dead man came out, his feet and hands bound with bands of stuff and a cloth round his face. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, let him go free.’

Many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary and had seen what he did believed in him.

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . Jesus deliberately delays visiting his friend, whom he knows is ill, and when he arrives, Lazarus is already dead. Everyone scolds him! Why did you delay, Jesus? Why did you abandon your friend? Jesus wants to show us that his mission is not simply the physical healing of people. Rather, he wants us to see that his desire is to enter into the darkness and absurdity of our lives and bring light and life. Many of us now feel the “captivity” of the coronavirus lockdown. But maybe it is a different kind of captivity that Jesus wishes to liberate us from? It is the voice of Christ that frees Lazarus from the tomb. In the same way it is the voice of Christ speaking to our hearts that frees us from our real captivity. It is not the door of our houses during the coronavirus lockdown that Christ needs to open. The stone that must be removed is from the door of our hearts, and we must allow the word of Christ to penetrate there. It is in the midst of our absurdities, our death, that Christ wishes to come and bring life. No human strategy can give life to a dead person. If we wish to have the life of Christ we must abandon our own strategies. Our strategies try to eliminate problems. But Christ’s strategy is different. He is not an insurance policy against misfortune! Rather he enters into that which we fear the most and illuminates it in a life-giving way. A spouse whose main preoccupation is to avoid difficulties will not make a good spouse. It is through these difficulties that the greater things of life are illuminated. In order to save us, the Lord must often ignore our pleas for help, because we are asking him to take away those things that would actually lead us to him if we tackled them properly. At such times, we think God has abandoned us. We think he is in “flight mode”, but in reality he is leading us to something much greater than the little “solutions” that we are demanding of him. God wants a relationship with us on a beautiful and deep level, from the perspective of eternity, not from the perspective of our temporal fixations and worries. We become fixated by the “emergencies” that surround us, but the Lord wishes us to live according to authentic priorities. His mission is to love us and save us. Our response must be to abandon ourselves into his arms and allow ourselves to be redeemed. It would be sad if, at the end of the quarantine, we walk free from our houses, but still have the stone across the door in our hearts. Even while we remain locked in our houses, we can still abandon ourselves to the voice of Christ and enjoy freedom and light.

Jesus behaves strangely in this passage. Why? Because he does not merely want to heal Lazarus but to show that his mission is to enter into the most unattractive areas of our lives and bring new life.

“Lazarus, come out!” In the context of the coronavirus quarantine, these are impressive words. Many of us are waiting to be able to leave our homes, and it evokes emotion to read the text of Ezekiel saying: “You will recognize that I am the Lord, when I open your tombs and let you go free”. Could this correlation between the liturgy and the ongoing world drama be a coincidence? In any case, the passage relates how Jesus pursues an unusual strategy in the way that he goes to the aid of Lazarus. He intentionally delays in helping his friend and then makes strange speeches to his disciples and Martha, the sister of the deceased, arousing bewilderment and dissent around him. Then Jesus gives thanks to the Father, just at the time of the removal of the stone in front of the tomb. At this very moment most people would have thought that Martha’s fear was about to materialize: "Lord, there will be a bad smell: it has been four days".

At this dramatic moment, Jesus gives thanks. For what? To be able to fulfill his mission, that of communicating with a dead person and bringing him back to life, precisely from that place where nobody can approach him anymore. Jesus is full of gratitude for being able to complete his mission of speaking to the poorest, the smelliest, the ugliest, the most unpresentable part of man, and love him in the areas where nobody is lovable. The places where only God can enter. Where only Christ has the strength to regenerate life.

What will bring us out of our tombs? Will government decrees, vaccinations, health regulations? What brings us out is the voice of Christ. The door that encloses us is not the door of our house but the door of our hearts. Christ wishes to open that door with his word

But there is a further aspect to this story: it is the voice of Christ, crying out loud, that has the power to liberate from the tomb. It is this voice of Christ, which goes beyond the tombstone, beyond the stench, beyond the strategies, and reaches Lazarus, the friend of Christ. What will get us out of our quarantine will not be a government decree, but a word that enters our heart, the word that changes everything from within. If that word enters the depths of man, one becomes truly free, even if one remains imprisoned. If we leave our "tombs" without God’s word in our hearts, we will remain whitewashed tombs. This is the great occasion of the present time: to be freed from within. The door to liberation is not the one of the house in which we are enclosed, but that of the heart. The stone to be removed is right there.

Lazarus, come to the Father, entrust yourself to him. For God brings life in the midst of absurdities, if only we abandon ourselves to him .

Jesus said to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live; whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Martha replied, "Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the son of God." Earlier Jesus had said: “This disease will not lead to death, but it is for the glory of God”. What do these words mean? They seem strangely apt, these first words of Jesus in the Gospel of this Sunday without public Mass, in a time of modern plague. Jesus was warned of Lazarus’ illness in good time, and could have intervened to save him, yet he stayed where he was for two more days. What was he waiting for? The sisters of the sick man, seeing Jesus arrive so late, will say: “Lord, if you had been here, our brother would not have died!” And the people, for their part, also complain: “He, who opened the eyes of the blind, could he not also make sure that Lazarus did not die?” Things happen that seem unfair to us, that shouldn't be allowed. Often these things are errors or misfortunes, like this coronavirus with a somewhat monarchical name. Meanwhile, we are journeying towards the Easter triduum, to celebrate a judicial error - the killing of an innocent man - which would become the greatest news in all of human history. Here is the point: the glory of God works like this, and what looks like a path to death is instead the path of life. This is beyond our human capacities; people cannot achieve these things. Man cannot attain eternity with his projects and strategies. In order for a story of death to become a triumph, it is necessary to go through something that seems an error, an injustice that should not have been made, and to see the power of God manifested precisely in that absurdity.

Even while we are quarantined, we can already walk free from our inner prisons by abandoning ourselves to the Father

There are solutions and then there are resurrections. These are very different categories. It is one thing to heal from an illness but another to enter into glory, to save Lazarus from death and to do something that is beyond biology, an experience of eternity. There is a serious danger with any healing: that of not taking advantage of this moment, that of experiencing the physical healing but not being reborn from above. Many of us are in quarantine, and from our rooms we wait for someone to say: Lazarus, it's over, you can come out! Sooner or later it will happen. But there is something more important, definitive, glorious: that we come out of our tombs while we are still inside. Father Tonino Bello said: God does not save from death, God saves through death. We cannot waste this opportunity to make that great journey, the going out through a secret door, of discovering endless spaces in which we can run, even if we are on a bed of illness, even if we are in quarantine. Otherwise, it could happen that we will eventually leave our rooms, but we will be trapped in our fears. We will have experienced a pardon, but not a resurrection. There are those who were free even while they were in prison; there are those who died young but lived a life that was resplendent. Lazarus, come out right now, not when the pandemic is over. Come to the Father. Abandon yourself to him.