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)
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Today’s Gospel, dear People of God,
is both dramatic and deeply consoling, revealing Jesus to us both in the majesty
of His divine power and in the depths of His human sympathy. And yet, most wonderfully of all, we are privileged
to learn something of the ineffable beauty of His Personal commitment to, and communion
with, His heavenly Father. This account of the raising of Lazarus is the
last of Jesus’ miracles in St. John’s Gospel and, as such, is 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, and ultimately above all, the faith of Jesus’ chosen disciples
upon whom and through whom He will build His future Church; and then, the faith
of those very dear friends of His, Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus. Their home, in the village of Bethany, was always
open to Him and, when needed, served as a place of refuge for Him; as, for
example, when - after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem and subsequent
cleansing of the Temple -- He left the city, its fickle crowds, and the ever-more
critical and threatening plots of the Pharisees and Temple authorities. The Pharisees were so intent on keeping their
human traditions rather than the God-given Law handed down to them by Moses; and
the Temple authorities, were outraged that their money-raising on the sacred Temple
property had been scuppered by Jesus.
Leaving them, He went
out of the city to Bethany, and there He spent the night. (Matthew 21:16-17)
Everything in this miraculous event is,
I say, directed towards faith-in-the-Person of Jesus, here revealing Himself in
the full beauty and power of His unique being: Perfect God and Perfect Man.
Jesus reveals not just the reality of
His human nature, but also, its divine beauty by the depth of His understanding,
and the tenderness of His 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 deeply troubled with a mixture of
anger and indignation.
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 keep
in mind, for such belief to slow her down.
Her relationship with Jesus was a loosely-binding relationship, in which
she recognized One Who was indeed mighty in His power and imposing in His
Person as the Christ foretold by the prophets, but not One Who could for long impinge
upon Martha’s work-ethic. Martha would
do anything on this earth for
Jesus, but she was not one to sit down and listen intently at the feet of Jesus
that she might learn something of the heavenly wisdom so redolent, for Mary, in
every word of Jesus Thus, Martha 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 purified
and deepened; for the moment, though,
her undoubted commitment would allow her to see the glory of God as her
brother, Lazarus walked out of the tomb – bound though he was by his burial wrappings
– at Jesus’ express command!
However, Saint Paul gives us a clue
to the yet holier vision of God’s glory to be seen outside that tomb, a glory
more likely to be seen by Mary than her sister Martha so thrilled by the re-appearance
of Lazarus, a holiness of which he spoke
when writing to his converts at Corinth:
God Who said, “Let
light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in 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 of God, of which St. Paul speaks, the glory visible on
Jesus’ up-turned face and which we can still find reflected in His prayer, was a deeper glory than
Martha could ever appreciate, a glory which Mary could perhaps have glimpsed and
been totally overwhelmed thereby, indeed a truly divine glory, expressive of the beauty of Jesus’ total love
of His Father and of us; His oneness with and undying presence to His
Father; the glory of His absolute selflessness, seeking not His own
will, not His own renown, but that of His Father; the glory of His unconditional obedience to and love
for His Father.
And again, dear friends, notice that,
as we began, so here at the end, this wondrous miracle was entered upon and carried
through to fulfilment:
That they may believe.
‘Believe’ what?
That is fully clarified when,
standing before the tomb of Lazarus and surrounded by the accompanying crowd,
Jesus prayed, audibly, saying:
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 Catholic and Christian faith, dear People of God. Jesus is the Word of God, 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 all will 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 decision, we can say with Martha, ‘Yes Lord, I
believe’; and if indeed, we can go further with Mary, trustfully allowing any
stone partially blocking the ready entrance
to our heart to be fully rolled away, thus
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.
