Fr. JC Maximilian

"The Raising of Lazarus" by Rembrandt

Holy Week is just a week away.  Just as Fr. Mick, myself, and the deacons are busy preparing for the liturgies of Holy Week, we find Jesus busy preparing His Apostles for the shock of His coming Passion, Death and Resurrection.  In the three Synoptic gospels, that is the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus prepares His Apostles for Calvary and the Resurrection by His Transfiguration.  There on the mountain, Peter, James and John witnesses the glory of Jesus’ divinity in the Transfiguration.

In St. John’s Gospel, there is no account of the Transfiguration, but we have this beautiful account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  St. John Chrysostom proposes for us that St. John the Evangelist gives us this account to show another way in which Jesus prepared His disciples for Calvary and His Resurrection.  While in the Transfiguration account Jesus manifests His Glory through radiance, in raising Lazarus from the dead Jesus reveals the glory of His divinity through the humbleness of His humanity.  Jesus is perturbed and weeps as He approaches Lazarus’ grave, demonstrating His human nature.  Who of us cannot recall being deeply troubled and weeping at the death of a loved one.  Jesus, in sharing our human nature, shares our grief and sorrows.  At the Transfiguration we hear the voice of the Father saying, “This is my Beloved Son.”  In today’s gospel account we hear Jesus praying to His Father, who always hears His prayers.  Jesus tells the crowd, and us, that while He knows that His Father always hears His prayers, He prays aloud so “that they may believe that you sent me.”  Jesus tells Martha that she will see the Glory of God.  Unlike the Transfiguration, where the climatic focus is on the dazzling cloths of Christ Jesus, in today’s gospel account the climatic focus is on the death rags of Lazarus.  Yet both reveal the Glory of God.  As St. John Chrysostom says, “In condescension to those present, Christ humbled himself and let his human nature be seen in order to gain them as witnesses to the miracle.”

And what of Lazarus?  We hear nothing more about him in the gospels, nor in the Acts of the Apostles or the epistles.  What must his life have been like after being raised from the dead?  I mean he was really dead.  He had been in the tomb for four days, so his body had started to decompose, yet at the words of Jesus, he was made new.

The poet Robert Browning also pondered the silence of Lazarus, and wrote a poem, An Epistle of Karshish.  Karshish is a Persian physician writing back to his master.  He has encountered Lazarus, who tells his remarkable story.  Karshish is skeptical, and like any good scientist, wants to know how this was done.  Lazarus tells him it is not the how that is important, but the who that is important.  Lazarus is portrayed as a very humble man, living simply, yet in his smallness he has become greater.  He does not promote himself, but rather praises God and points all inquirers to Christ Jesus.  Karshish finds the Lazarus’ story of Jesus, “God himself, Creator and sustainer of the world, That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile!” to be utter folly.  Yet even doubting Karshish sees the implications of the Good News that Lazarus shared with him.  He ends his letter to his master, Abib, with these words:

The very God! Think, Abib, does thou think?
So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too –
So, through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying, “O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,
But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
And thou must love me who have died for thee!”

In two weeks, our catechumens will die to sin and will be raised to new life in Christ Jesus.  It is a death and resurrection that all of us who have been baptized have experienced.  The miracle of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead should strengthen our belief that enables us to “see the Glory of God” in our lives.  Yet Jesus is glorified on the Cross, so for us to share in Christ’s transfiguration, we must refuse to be put off by the stink of our lives.  We must take away the stones that obstruct us from personal communion with Jesus.  We must untie everything that binds our God-given freedom, so to live as children of God.  Only by uniting ourselves with to the suffering of Jesus on the Cross, will we share in His resurrection.

After tell her that He is the Resurrection and the Life, Jesus asks Martha, “Do you believe this?”  He asks us the same question.  Pray that we can give Him an answer like Martha, who said, “Yes, Lord.  I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”  Come Lord Jesus! Make us new in You.