Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year A
(Ezekiel 37:12-14; St. Paul to the
Romans 8:8-11; St. John’s Gospel 11:1-45)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today’s Gospel, dear People of God,
is both dramatic and deeply consoling, revealing Jesus to us in the awesomeness
of His divine power and the tenderness of His compassionate humanity, and also
-- most wonderfully -- in the ineffable beauty of His Personal commitment to
and communion with His heavenly Father. That St. John was well aware of all this is
shown by the fact that the raising of Lazarus is the last of Jesus’ miracles in
his Gospel and, as such, is of supreme significance in itself and worthy of our
closest attention.
First of all we should note that the
intention of Jesus to establish, confirm, and fulfil faith is paramount in all aspects of the Gospel account:
Jesus said to (His
disciples) clearly, “Lazarus has died, and I am glad for you that I was not
there, that you may believe. Let us go to him.”
Jesus told Martha, “I
am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in Me, even if he
dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never
die. Do you believe this?”
Martha said to him,
“Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that You are the Messiah, the Son of
God, the one who is coming into the world.”
Jesus raised His eyes
and said, “Father, I thank You for hearing Me.
I know that You always hear Me; but because of the crowd here I have
said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.”
Six times Jesus uses or calls forth
the word ‘believe’ in our short Gospel passage, before St. John himself ultimately
tells us:
Now many of the Jews
who had come to Mary and seen what He had done began to believe in Him.
All is indeed directed towards faith,
first of all in Jesus’ chosen disciples upon whom and through whom He will
build His future Church, and then, in those very dear friends of His, Martha
and Mary and their brother Lazarus, whose home in the village of Bethany was
ever open to Him and, when needed, served as a place of refuge for Him and a
blessing for them; as when, for example, after His triumphal entry into
Jerusalem, He left the city, its fickle crowds, and the ever more insistent criticisms
and threatening plots of the Pharisees and Temple authorities:
“Do you hear what they are
saying?” Jesus answered them, “Yes; and
have you never read the text, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nurslings you
have brought forth praise’?” And
leaving them, He went out of the city to Bethany, and there He spent the night.
(Matthew 21:16-17)
All is directed towards faith in the
Person of Jesus, here revealing Himself in the full beauty of His humanity and in
the divine majesty of the miracle He was about to perform for His friends: a
miracle which would perfectly foreshadow His decisive victory over Satan in the
cosmic conflict even now raging around Him and threatening an imminent climax –
the supreme and totally conclusive climax indeed, though not yet the ultimate
confrontation -- in the holy city of Jerusalem, so near and dear, yet become so
threatening and unworthy.
Jesus reveals not just the reality of
His human nature, but, as I said, its beauty and perfection in the profound
depth of His fellow-feeling and understanding, and the humble tenderness of His
sensitivity and compassion:
When Mary came to where
Jesus was and saw him, she fell at His feet and said to Him, “Lord, if You had
been here, my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping …
He (Himself) wept.
And this He did in no foppish manner,
for in line with the Vulgate translation we learn that when He saw their
weeping:
Jesus became perturbed -- not just upset, not merely distressed, but with a certain mixture
of anger and indignation -- and deeply troubled.
It was in pursuance of such
indignation that He asked to be shown the place where Lazarus had been placed that there He
might make manifest His determination to overthrow the abusive power of Satan
in the human lives of all who would believe in Him and learn to walk in His
ways.
So Jesus came to the
tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.
Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man’s sister, said
to Him, “Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.” Jesus
said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of
God?” So they took away the stone.
It is not easy to assess just what
Martha believed about Jesus; as you have seen she did most certainly believe in
Him, but somehow she seems always to have had too much to do, too much to say,
to keep in mind, for such belief to slow her down, let alone ‘stop her in her
tracks’. Perhaps her relationship with Jesus was one of
religious admiration befitting a traditional prophet figure or miracle worker, with
perhaps a touch of personal ‘affection’; a loosely-bound or somewhat independent
relationship, rather than a fully humble self-demission before One Who was
awesome not only in His power but most of all in the mystery of His Person; a
humbling akin to the commitment of discipleship and conducive to an instinctive
and sympathetic understanding and appreciation, and perhaps even to worship. Martha would do anything for Jesus, but
she was not one to sit down and listen intently at the feet of Jesus; and anyhow,
everybody knew that only the God of Israel could give bring the dead back to
life. Thus, she most probably expressed
the thoughts of all the visiting Jews present when she exclaimed, ‘Lord, by now
there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.’
To that Jesus replied, somewhat
reprovingly indeed, but again and above all, mysteriously:
Did
I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?
Martha's ‘belief’ needed to be both
deepened and purified; for the moment, though, her undoubted commitment would allow
her to see something of that glory as she managed to humble herself and
patiently look to, and wait for, Jesus.
Saint Paul gives us a clue to the nature
of that glory of God she was about to witness when he wrote to his converts at
Corinth:
God who said, “Let
light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to bring to light the
knowledge of the glory of God on the face of (Jesus the) Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6)
And indeed, what beauty, what glory,
was now to be seen on the face of Jesus as He:
Raised His eyes and
said, “Father, I thank You for hearing Me.
I know that You always hear Me; but because of the crowd here I have
said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.”
Jesus had undoubtedly spoken to
Martha of the glory to be made manifest by the life-giving, life-restoring,
miracle He was now about to perform when:
He cried out in a loud
voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man
came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a
cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.”
Nevertheless, we are surely not erring if, in this case, we allow ourselves to think that the glory visible on Jesus’ up-turned face and which we can still find reflected in His prayer, the glory expressive of the wondrous beauty of Jesus’ total oneness with and undying presence to His Father; the glory of His absolute selflessness, seeking not His own will, His own renown, but that of His Father, as expressed in those words, that they may believe that You sent Me; the glory of His unconditional obedience to and love for His Father; all this is, surely, even yet more glorious than the truly divine power so splendidly manifested when Lazarus came out -- still wearing all his burial bands -- from the tomb where he had lain for four days. And again, dear friends, notice that, as we began so here at the end, all is entered upon and carried through to fulfilment, for love of His Father and of us: That they may believe.
‘Believe’ what? Jesus had told His disciples on His first
hearing of Lazarus’ death:
I am glad for you that
I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him.
That is further clarified when,
standing before the tomb of Lazarus and surrounded by the accompanying crowd,
Jesus prayed:
Father, I thank You for
hearing Me … because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe
that You sent Me.”
Belief in Jesus as the One sent by
the Father; that is the kernel of our faith in, and the true glory of, the Son
of Man. He is God the Son become flesh of
the Virgin by the Holy Spirit; and His glory on earth lies in the
self-sacrificing love of His proclamation and manifestation of the ultimate
Glory of the eternal God: the sublime oneness
and goodness of the most Holy Trinity, Father and Son -- begetting and begotten
-- in the unity of the Most Holy Spirit of Truth and Love.
Dear People of God, we are most
surely meant to draw strength for our faith, consolation, comfort and joy, for
our heart, as we ponder today’s readings.
For, in the difficulties and griefs, in the temptations and trials, of
living and dying, the most important question we will all have to answer
sometime is, ‘Do you trust in My love, do you believe in My power, to save you?’ And if in such a moment of crisis we can say
with Martha, ‘Yes Lord, I believe’; if indeed, with Mary, we can trustfully allow
any stone partially blocking the ready entrance to our heart to be fully rolled
away and thus -- despite any fear, great or small, of what might be hidden
there -- leaving the way to our innermost being opened up wide to the saving
power and healing love of Jesus, then, undoubtedly, we shall, as Jesus
promised, see the glory of God.
