V SUNDAY OF LENT
“I AM THE LIFE”
By our Pastor, Fr. Carmelo Jiménez
We enter into the last week of this Lent and we do it with a petition: asking for God’s help to live the same love that brought Jesus to give his life for all. If we look back at the themes of the gospels that we have read during the Sundays of Lent we find a great richness and the manifestation of love and mercy poured out for us.
My reflection will be based on the gospel: the gospel writer does not doubt for a minute that Jesus has brought his friend Lazarus back from the dead; but how does he interpret that and what does it mean? The raising of Lazarus from the dead is such a beautiful and powerful account, but what actually interests him is the mystery of death and the life that flows from Jesus himself. It is about what we humans long for and what we look for, and what God offers us. “When Jesus heard this he said, ‘This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’” (Jn 11:4) If we look carefully, he doesn’t want to only tell us about the events surrounding raising Lazarus from the dead, which was simply coming back to life, but rather take advantage of this situation to dive deeper into what Jesus means for the Christian faith and very concretely when facing the mystery of death.
The accounts of the blind man from birth and raising Lazarus from the dead both gravitate toward the expression of God’s gifts: light and life. In the first, the true light, Jesus, is the one who faces the shadows of sin; the light in the eyes of the blind man was nothing more than the sign of the other light that he was given: faith. And in the scene from this Sunday, the one who gives life to Lazarus is on his way to death, he is going to Jerusalem. And the life that appears once again in the body of Lazarus is nothing more than that sign of the other life, the one of the believer, the one that God will give everyone after the salvific resurrection of his Son.
“So when he heard that he was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was.” (Jn 11:6) Jesus finds out that his friend is sick. But Jesus doesn’t move, but rather takes more time to let him die. Jesus wants to face death the way it is, the way we humans consider it: a tragedy. Death, then, has two meanings: a) the physical death, that doesn’t worry Jesus and b) death as a mystery from which Jesus frees us.
In Sebree, KY we have lived a week of many sad events for many of our parish families. We have experienced death up close and in different circumstances. It makes us think about our own time to give an account to God. This brings us to think, am I prepared for death? For this type of death that Jesus Christ refers to in the gospel?
“She went and called her sister Mary secretly, saying, ‘The teacher is here and is asking for you.’ …So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her, presuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there.” (Jn. 28.31) The Jews who were not believers had not been able to find all of the strength of life in God, because they were looking for something that rose above reason and something that can only be found in faith in the person of Jesus. They had not been able to give hope to Lazarus’ sisters.
“‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Sir, come and see.’ And Jesus wept.” (Jn 11:34-35) The gospel writer does not want to just present the man Jesus, but rather the Lord Jesus. He wants to say that the Lord does not abandon those who are dead due to human laws and due to their own sins, even if they have been in the tomb four days. One more, in order to show that three days have already passed, which is when the cadaver was considered lost.
No man is lost for God. The one who truly gives life is the Lord, and so Lazarus is raised to life. This raising Lazarus from the dead only has meaning in the light of the resurrection of Jesus himself. Jesus can now go to death, because physical death is not an obstacle for eternal life. With that he is able to prepare the faithful so they understand that physical death cannot destroy man. That the Cross ends up being the beginning of life, through God’s action of true resurrection.
May God grant eternal life to our deceased brothers and sisters and prepare us for our own. Amen.