Even if our loved one’s death was not sudden or unexpected, and even if their death came as a grace after a long period of suffering, even still we can easily find ourselves overwhelmed with questions: “Why did they have to die?” – “What will life be like without them?” – “How can I go on without them?” – “Where is it that they have gone?” – “What will my own death be like?”
In moments of grief and loss we may even find ourselves questioning our faith: “Why did God let this happen?” – “Where is God now, when we need Him most?”
It’s somewhat ironic, therefore, that even though today’s Gospel essentially takes place at a funeral, it’s actually Jesus who is the one asking the story’s central question.
Jesus has gone to Bethany, to Martha and Mary’s house, because their brother Lazarus has died. When He gets there Martha essentially voices the questions I’ve just mentioned when she says, “Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, He will give you.”
It’s like she’s asking: “Where the heck were you when your friend was dying? You healed and raised other people, why don’t you do something now?”
But when Jesus consoles Martha by saying: “Your brother will rise again,” and Martha responds, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day . . .”
Jesus interjects, and clarifies His point: “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” He says. “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.”
And then He asks: “Do you believe this?”
This, brothers and sisters, is the central and all-important question – not just of this Gospel story, but of the entirety of the Scriptures! Indeed, this question is the central question of our entire lives – the central question of all of human history!
In today’s Gospel Jesus turns the tables on us, so to speak, and He asks each and every one of us: “Do you believe this?” Do you believe that Jesus Himself is truly alive? Do you believe that your deceased loved ones are really still alive? Do you believe that we too will one day live forever, body and soul, with God, even after we die?
If we’re honest, at times we’re not quite sure how to answer. We’re not quite sure what we really believe. In moments of grief, what we thought we once knew and believed is often clouded over and hidden. We’re uncertain of how to answer this all-important question.
When I was a boy, my family lived near our parish church and my brother and I attended our parish school – so I got called to serve a lot of funerals. And whenever this Gospel was read at a funeral, I thought to myself even then: when a mourning family hears this Gospel doesn’t it make them want Jesus to bring their loved one back like He did Lazarus? If He did that, then we’d certainly be able to answer that, “Yes Lord, we believe!”
But as human as it is to long for that to happen, in a certain sense to do so is to fall into Martha’s initial misunderstanding. It is to long merely for our loved one to be resuscitated – to be brought back to live with us, for a time, but like Lazarus, to eventually die again, definitively.
And so, the most important part of today’s Gospel is not that Jesus resuscitated Lazarus – it is that Jesus revealed that He Himself is the Resurrection and the Life! Jesus is preparing His disciples for the experience of the Cross – trying to show them that when He dies on Calvary, as He must, that it is not the end of the story – that He will rise again, and that because He is the Lord of Life, His Resurrection will usher in a new era for all of us, and for all creation!
In his newest book, our Holy Father puts it this way: Resuscitating Lazarus was just a sign. “But the Resurrection of the Son of Man was utterly different. Jesus’ Resurrection was about breaking out into an entirely new form of life, into a life that is no longer subject to the law of dying, but lies beyond it – a life that opens up a new dimension of human existence.”We’re left, though, with the same central question: “Do you believe this?” Even after clarifying what it is that Jesus is really speaking about and offering to us, we still have to discover how to truly believe in this new form of Resurrected Life that Jesus and our deceased loved ones now share.
Well, Jesus Himself told us that the new life of His kingdom was already present in this world, in miniature, so to speak, like a mustard seed. The Resurrected Life we long to share in at the end of our lives, can in fact already be experienced here and now! The secret is to recognize it and to live it.
If we’re attentive, our readings today give us a suggestion for how to do just that. In our first reading, we hear God promise, through the Prophet Ezekiel: “I will open your graves and have you rise from them . . . I will put my spirit in you that you may live.” And yes, of course, we know that this prefigures the raising of Lazarus, which prefigures the Resurrection of Jesus.
But the graves that God opens are not only those of our physical death. God also opens the graves of our grief and loss and doubt – He opens whatever graves of death we may have fallen into through weakness and sin.
Sure enough, St. Paul says, in his Letter to the Romans that “although the body is dead because of sin . . . if the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies.”
In other words, when we experience here in this life, the forgiveness of our sins, we are given a participation in the new life being offered to us through Christ’s Resurrection!
And so, finally, in today’s Gospel from St. John, after Jesus prays to His heavenly Father outside Lazarus’, He gives the command, “Untie him and let him go.” In forgiving our sins Christ unbinds us, just like He unbound Lazarus, and He gives us Resurrected Life, here in this life, and after our death, in the life to come.
Brothers and sisters, in the waters of Baptism we went into the tomb and died with Christ, so that we might also share in His Resurrection. Whenever we receive, in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the complete forgiveness of our sins, we are restored to that Resurrected Life given to us at Baptism.
In the remaining weeks of Lent, may we all approach the beautiful Sacrament of Reconciliation so that we might experience new life, and
with Martha and Mary, make our entire lives a bold profession of faith: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Resurrection,
and the Life.”
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