April 2^nd 2017. FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT

Gospel: John 11:1-45

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

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading...

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GOSPEL: John 11:1-45

There was a man named Lazarus who lived in the village of Bethany with the two sisters, Mary and Martha, and he was ill. – It was the same Mary, the sister of the sick man Lazarus, who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair. The sisters sent this message to Jesus, ‘Lord, the man you love is ill’. On receiving the message, Jesus said, ‘This sickness will end not 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 heard that Lazarus was ill he stayed where he was for two more days before saying to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judaea’. The disciples said, ‘Rabbi, it is not long since the Jews wanted to stone you; are you going back again?’ Jesus replied: ‘

Are there not twelve hours in the day? 
A man can walk in the daytime without stumbling 
because he has the light of this world to see by;
but if he walks at night he stumbles, 
because there is no light to guide him.’

He said that and then added, ‘Our friend Lazarus is resting, I am going to wake him’. The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he is able to rest he is sure to get better’. The phrase Jesus used referred to the death of Lazarus, but they thought that by ‘rest’ he meant ‘sleep’, so Jesus put it plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead; and for your sake I am glad I was not there because now you will believe. But let us go to him.’ Then Thomas – known as the Twin – said to the other disciples, ‘Let us go too, and die with him’.

On arriving, Jesus found that Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days already. Bethany is only about two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to sympathise with them over their brother. 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, ‘1 know he will rise again at the resurrection on the last day’. Jesus said:

‘I am the resurrection. 
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.’ When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in a low voice, ‘The Master is here and wants to see you’. Hearing this, Mary got up quickly and went to him. Jesus had not yet come into the village; he was still at the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were in the house sympathising with Mary saw her get up so quickly and go out, they followed her, thinking that she was going to the tomb to weep there.

Mary went to Jesus, and as soon as she saw him she threw herself at his feet, saying, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died’. At the sight of her tears, and those of the Jews who followed her, Jesus said in great distress, with a sigh that came straight from the heart, ‘Where have you put him?’ They said, ‘Lord, come and see’. Jesus wept; and the Jews 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 . . .  The Gospel this Sunday recounts the raising of Lazarus. How relevant this Gospel is to all of our lives! Each one of us is trapped to some extent within multiple prisons and snares, within negative memories, within sufferings, within sins, within vices, within the incapacity to go beyond the barriers that we have erected around ourselves. How can Jesus open these graves and bring us back to new life? As we see in the Gospel reading, Jesus seems slow to respond to Lazarus’ plea for help. In fact, he doesn’t respond until Lazarus is already dead. God often appears to be reluctant to come to our help. But that is because we often looking for a superficial solution to our problems. We want the physical ailment to be healed, the physical inconvenience to be removed. We have little interest in allowing Jesus enter into our deepest hearts. Jesus wants to resolve our profoundest problems, and thus he sometimes allows the situation to become desperate. When the situation is desperate then we finally begin to dialogue with Jesus on the deepest level. We are no longer hedging our bets. It is clear that we have no hope of resolving the issue ourselves and that it is either God or nothing. A dialogue of this sort unfolds with Martha and Mary. Jesus then orders that the tomb be opened, even though the body has been dead four days and will have begun to smell. It is only when Jesus is allowed to enter into the sickest and most decaying parts of our hearts that he can bring us new life. New life is not an artificial readjustment of superficial things! It involves the most unpresentable part of our beings, our true poverty, being touched by the life of Jesus.

All of us find ourselves trapped in many tombs, many prisons, many snares. Just as Jesus raised Lazarus, so too he can call us out of our existential tombs

We have arrived at the Fifth Sunday of Lent and are blessed to be reading these fundamental texts used in Year A of the liturgical cycle. The readings for Sunday are also used by adult catechumens in their third baptismal scrutiny in which our faith in the resurrection is celebrated. The Gospel account of the raising of Lazarus is prepared for in the first reading from Ezekiel: “I am now going to open your graves; I mean to raise you from your graves, my people”. What does this mean? The readings this week deal with the most painful and irresolvable questions of the human condition. The reality of death is well represented by the image of the tomb, the stone rolled across the final chapter of human existence. The statement in Ezekiel about the Lord’s intention to open our graves is a startling one, and we expect the Gospel to shed some light upon it. The account of the raising of Lazarus occurs in the 11^th chapter of John’s Gospel. The 13^th chapter is already the beginning of the account of the Last Supper. Thus this raising of Lazarus is very close to the events of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. What is the core message here? We are on the road towards life, a road that goes beyond the tomb, but there is a journey to be undertaken first. The words in Ezekiel stating that the Lord will raise us from our graves and lead us back to the soil of Israel is evidently a symbolic statement that refers to a journey that we are going to undertake now upon this earth. We can open ourselves to this life that goes beyond the tomb because already here in this life we can experience the power of God with respect to the many tombs, prisons and snares that we become trapped in. The human being has the ability to construct many prisons for himself. Everyone, sooner or later, becomes aware to some extent that they are ensnared in something, within memories, within sufferings, within sins, within vices, within the incapacity to go beyond the barriers that we have erected around ourselves. We are trapped alive within these tombs, but in reality we have become fossilized at the most profound depths of our being. The light that enlightens Lazarus is a light that illuminates the tombs of our everyday lives, all those things in which we are encapsulated and are unable to resolve.

God does not always come to our aid when we call upon him. Sometimes we call on him because we want a superficial solution to our problems – the healing of the physical ailment and nothing else. God allows our situation to become desperate so that we will call on him authentically and thus give him the possibility to transform us

Jesus progresses in stages. He does not respond when Lazarus and his sisters call on him to come to their aid. God sometimes allows us to arrive at the point of desperation. What Christ brings is not a palliative but an authentic liberation. It is not a temporary resolution of our problems but a radical enlightenment of the deepest issues in our lives. As a consequence, it might sometimes appear that God is being lazy in his response to our pleas for help. Jesus does not move when he is called by Lazarus because he is not interested in resolving a minor problem, but a more radical one. It is only when Lazarus is already dead that Jesus gets on the move. At this point, Jesus can be sure that human solutions are no longer possible. It is a fact that we tend to rely on our own capacities and powers for as long as we think that we might have some chance of success. We make God a spectator until the point arrives when we no longer have any hope of resolving the problem ourselves. Jesus arrives at a time when it will be undeniable that, if any resolution happens, then it was down to him and his power. It is only when I know that I have no hope of doing anything myself that I begin to dialogue with God.

God can only transform us if he is allowed to roll back the stone on the sickest and most rotten parts of our hearts. We can only receive new life if the Lord is allowed to touch us in these darkest parts of our being..

And Jesus now finds himself in a dialogue with Martha. It is as if Martha, Mary and Lazarus are a single personality. Martha is the rational part of the person, the person who is active and practical, as we see elsewhere in the New Testament. She is looking for a rational explanation: is it possible that the Lord is such an important part of our lives and yet was unable to intervene in this tragedy? Mary now appears and begins to weep. Grief is very important. It has a vital function and is a unique instrument of dialogue with God. In our grief we are completely authentic. In our tears we are finally ourselves, our mask falls away and the reality of our hearts becomes visible. How essential it is to arrive at the heart! The grief of Mary is contagious and becomes also the grief of Jesus. But Jesus elevates this grief onto a different plane. To cry along with the Lord sometimes manages to unblock, dissolve, what is hurting us deep down. Now Martha enters the scene again. She has been instructed by the tears of Martha and now understands that it is time to confront this question right to the end. She realizes that Jesus is going to make contact with their brother who already by this time has begun to decompose. But Jesus is not afraid to confront this reality and asks that the stone be rolled away. The contact between Jesus and the part of humanity that is sick, that is dead, that is in a state of putrefaction – it is here that humanity receives new life. It is here that the depths of our heart are finally visited by the tenderness of God. The translation, “Lazarus, come out!” is not quite right. “Lazarus, here, beside me, right now!” would be a better rendering. In other words, turn towards the Lord. The proper condition of our hearts is not one of dissolution or desperation, but one of orientation towards the Lord. It is in the sick and decaying regions of our heart that the Lord enters, that a new light appears. Life is lived by the power of having been finally understood in one’s suffering, finally understood in all of one’s poverty.