Chúa Nhật V Mùa Chay A

[hoangvu]

CÁC BÀI ĐỌC BẰNG TIẾNG ANH

BÀI ĐỌC I: First Reading: Ezekiel 37:12-14
Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act," says the Lord.

ĐÁP CA: Resp. Psalm: Ps 130:1-8
Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?
But there is forgiveness with you,
so that you may be revered.
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.
O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is great power to redeem.
It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.

BÀI ĐỌC II: Second Reading: Epistle to the Romans 8:8-11
Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

PHÚC ÂM: Gospel: John 11:1-45 or, shorter version: 11:3-7, 20-27, 33-45
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill."
But when Jesus heard it, he said, "This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again."
The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?" Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is ot in them." After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him."
The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right." Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother.
When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Buteven now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."

SUY NIỆM PHÚC ÂM

TÌNH YÊU PHÓ THÁC
CN5MCA: Jn 11:1-45

Thỉnh thoảng người ta lại nghe thấy người MC nào đó trong một tiệc cưới nhắc đi nhắc lại vài vần thơ tình đến thành sáo ngữ: "Làm sao định nghĩa được tình yêu, Có nghĩa gì đâu một buổi chiều, Nó chiếm hồn ta bằng nắng nhạt, Bằng mây nhè nhẹ gío hiu hiu!" Có thể coi đó như một sáo ngữ chân lý của tình yêu, vì tình yêu không rõ khuôn mặt, nhưng lại tràn đầy sức mầu nhiệm. Sức nhiệm mầu của tình yêu là sự biến đổi mãnh liệt: từ xấu thành tốt, từ không thành có hay ngược lại. Nếu đem áp dụng vào câu nói của Maria, chị Lazaro trong Phúc âm hôm nay: "Lạy Thầy, nếu Thầy có mặt ở đây thì em con không chết", ta sẽ nhận ra chẳng những sự chân thành, tế nhị và nét hấp dẫn của tâm hồn tràn đầy tình yêu nơi chị, mà còn đọc được niềm tin tuyệt đối của tâm hồn chị vào Chúa Giêsu, Đấng có thể cải tổ hoàn sinh, để từ đó, tình yêu từ lòng Maria và Chúa đã biến đổi cả người sống lẫn kẻ chết.

Quả thực, trong trái tim Maria có một hấp lực lạ lùng của tình yêu, mà theo nghĩa thông thường, ta thường hay diễn tả bằng vài chữ "trái tim dễ thương", đến nỗi đã khiến Chúa Giêsu chọn gia đình chị làm chỗ nghỉ chân mỗi khi đi ngang qua làng Bêtania. Câu nói "Nếu Thầy có mặt ở đây thì em con không chết" chính là câu nói phó thác và tin tưởng của tình vào người mình yêu thương hết lòng. Chính Chúa Giêsu đã đọc được ý nghĩa chân thành và nét đẹp kiều diễm tế nhị của tình yêu trong đó và Ngài đã quả quyết với Maria: "Em con sẽ sống lại." Đối với chị, đó là câu nói dành niềm tin cho quá khứ, vì em đã chết; nhưng cũng dành cho hiện tại, vì dù em đã chết, và ngay bây giờ Thầy xin gì cùng Thiên Chúa, Thiên Chúa cũng sẽ ban cho Thầy. Điều đó cho thấy rằng, ngoài tâm hồn tràn đầy tình yêu, Maria còn có một đức tin tuyệt đối vào Chúa Giêsu, mà có lẽ chị đã chứng kiến nhiều phép lạ Ngài làm cho đồng bào của chị.

Suy gẫm về phép lạ Chúa Giêsu làm cho Lazaro sống lại, người ta chắc chắn sẽ cảm nghiệm được tình thương của Chúa Giêsu dành cho vào giây phút phục sinh đời mình. Đây là niềm tin đầy phấn khởi cho cuộc đời nhân loại, vì chính Chúa đã phục sinh. Tuy nhiên, cuộc đối thoại giữa Maria và Chúa Giêsu là phần trong câu chuyện, sẽ gợi ta về cách cư xử bằng tình yêu với Chúa Giêsu và với anh chị em mình. Mỗi khi ta phạm tội là như đã chết đi một lần; hoặc mỗi khi xa rời anh chị em đồng loại do hận thù ghen ghét, thì cũng như hồn đã chết rồi. Hãy bắt chước Maria nói với Chúa: Lạy Thầy, nếu Thầy có mặt trong con, thì con đã không chết. Chúng ta tin rằng thái độ tin yêu phó thác của mình sẽ làm Chúa Giêsu hiện điện đỡ nâng và đưa ta về với Ngài.

Lm. Raphael Xuân Nguyên



5th Sunday of Lent
Ex 37:12-14; Rom 8:8-11; Jn 11:1 -45
Today I serve my God Anew (John Walsh)
Greater Love Than This (Liam Swords)
In the place of Lazarus (Alex McAllister)
Life After Life (Jack McArdle)
Ready for a Miracle? (Munachi Ezeogu)

Today I serve my God Anew
(John Walsh)

The story of the journey of each of us to God is a story of fresh beginnings. Saint Bernard, the Cistercian Abbot of Clairvaux, used to say each morning, “This day I will begin to serve my God anew.” In ancient Greek mythology there was a fable about the Phoenix, a bird- which was reputed to live an immensely long time. And when it sensed at the end of every five hundred years that death, as a possibility, was drawing near, it built a kind of funeral pyre around itself, and set fire to it. Then from the ashes of this fire the Phoenix rose again, rejuvenated and resplendent, to begin a new cycle in its existence.
All this of course was a myth, but year after year in our lives, Lent, in a very real sense, is, or should be, a time of revitalisation, of renewal, a time when we once again dedicate our lives, in a fuller way, to Almighty God. And, very appropriately, all three readings for this Sunday are concerned with resurrection to newness of life.
In the OT reading, Ezekiel, the great prophet of the exile in Babylon, speaks about the hope of Israel's return from exile to their own native soil, an event which he compares with a rising again from the grave. God will put his Spirit within his people, and they will awake to a new awareness of his sustaining presence among them. St Paul, in the second reading, refers to the way in which Christ has burst the bonds of death and decay by his resurrection, and how in rising from the dead, he has taken on a new and totally transformed existence.
The Spirit which raised Christ from the dead is, moreover, received by all Christians, at the moment of baptism, and this indwelling Spirit is a sign in our mortal bodies - a sign which betokens a new life within us, which can never be destroyed, even with the death of our bodies. The state of each one of us, in this life, is governed by two forces, which in a way, we might say, are in conflict with one another - the life of the Spirit, and the death of the body. These two are emphasised in the high point of the gospel story about the raising of Lazarus, where Christ says, “I am the resurrection. If anyone believes in me, even though he dies, he will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” If a person has faith in Christ and places all his trust in him, then he will be possessed by the Spirit of the risen Jesus, raised up into a new plane of existence, and for him death loses all its destructive power. “Yes it is my Father's will,” Jesus had promised by the Sea of Galilee, “that whoever sees the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and that I shall raise him up on the last day” (Jn 6:40).
Seeing the Son, for us, is to regard him with the inner eye of faith, and acknowledge that he is truly the Son sent by the Father. Indeed, whoever sees the Son, sees the Father who sent him, as Jesus himself pointed out (cf. Jn 12:45). But, just as the customary circular grave stone of that time shut off Lazarus in the tomb from the outside world of light and life, so we, by the manner of life we lead, can erect a barrier between ourselves and Christ - Christ who wants to be our light and our life. This obstacle to the grace of God can be an accumulation of compromises, neglect, self-deception, settling for a second-rate form of Christianity.
Lent is a time for removing these obstacles, for renewing the life of Christ's holy Spirit within us. The goal of life in this world should be to please God, and both Christians and Jews aspire to this ideal. We can arrive at this goal only by allowing the Spirit of Jesus to dwell in us, to direct us, to permeate our whole being, to the extent that we live for God. Without the Spirit which is the true source of Christian life, the body, through the influence of sin becomes inert. “People who are taken up solely with material things can never be pleasing to God” (Rom 8:8 ).
We may take courage and inspiration from the consoling words of St Paul to his Corinthian community, “Though this outward nature of ours may be falling into decay, the inner nature is renewed day by day. Yes, the troubles of this life, which are soon over, though they weigh little, train us for the carrying of a weight of eternal glory, which is out of all proportion to them” (2 Cor 4:16f).
May this Lenten season leave each one of us with a clearer, and more real, vision of that eternal glory which God has promised will be ours, if only we have a deep and lasting faith in his word, and are obedient to the message he addresses to us through his divine Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.






Greater Love Than This
(Liam Swords)

Some years ago, I took up a temporary assignment in a parish in Los Angeles. It is customary for priests there to take their day-off on Mondays. Usually, they get together in a foursome to play golf during the day and eat out in a restaurant in the evening. The time-honoured custom among the clergy in the US is to wear civilian clothes when off-duty. In the climate of Southern California, this usually consists of open-neck shirt and pants. While there, I followed the local custom. One such evening, with three of my clerical friends, all in our early thirties, I ended up in a restaurant. We exchanged a few pleasantries with the pretty young waitress who came to serve us, taking a little advantage of our anonymity. Then we settled down to the serious business of eating. Half-way through the meal, the waitress returned. “Everything O.K., Fathers?” she enquired. I was dumbfounded. How did she know we were priests? It was a new twist on the old dictum: “Once a priest, always a priest."
One of my American colleagues enlightened me. “In this country,” he said, “four males sitting together are either four homosexuals or four priests.” Recent disclosures suggest that these categories are not always mutually exclusive.
I was saddened then and I am more saddened now. In all other ages we would have been automatically assumed to have been friends. In a world obsessed by sex, the only real casualty is friendship. Every relationship is now deemed to have a hidden agenda, invariably sexual. There is no place for a platonic friendship free from suspicion. It was not always so. In the ancient world friendship was among the cardinal virtues. Cicero wrote one of his finest treatises on the subject. Any historical researcher could reproduce correspondence among friends whose language would be regarded today as ambiguous, to say the least. An Irish Jacobite writing to his friend on the eve of a battle where he was to lose his life, forgave him a debt, “since no man breathing loves you more than I do."
Strange that the church neglects friendship so much in its preaching. It has become the Cinderella of the virtues. And yet, Jesus Christ valued it so much, as today's gospel records, that he was willing to give his life for it. Jesus had many disciples and numerous followers but he had only three friends, two girls and their brother, in the village of Bethany. “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus."
When he wept at the tomb of Lazarus, the Jews remarked, “See how much he loved him.” His friendship for Lazarus was to cost Jesus his life. Even his disciples had warned him against returning to Bethany, a mere stone's throw from Jerusalem. There, the established religion, threatened by the growing Jesus-movement among their adherents, were seeking a pretext to do away with him. The raising of Lazarus, right there in Bethany under their noses, was the final provocation. “Greater love than this no man has, that a man lays down his life for his friend.” The story of our salvation is also the story of a great friendship.
Adolescence is the great period of friendship in our lives. Every teenager finds a best friend before he ever finds his first love. And friendships made then endure a lifetime. Neither time nor space seems to diminish the relationship. It is strange how even after long separation, we can pick up again years later where we left off in our schooldays. As we grow older, the number of our acquaintances multiply but real friendship remains elusive. We become more economic with our affections and less inclined to invest them even in those we like. But friendship is not one of life's peripheral options. If Jesus Christ, the Son of God, treasured the friendship of Mary, Martha and their brother Lazarus, it would be foolish of us to think we can manage without them.
Additional Bidding Prayers
We pray:
- that God will give us the grace of friendship in our lives.
- that we will always remain faithful to our friends.
- for our friends that they will always remain true to God and to us.






Life After Life
(Jack McArdle)

Theme: Have you noticed that the gospels these Sundays are very long? (Next Sunday's gospel is the Passion narrative, which is the longest gospel in the liturgical calendar.) Once again, today, we have a story that contains very central issues of the message and mission of Jesus. It is about love, about friendship, about life, and about death. There are some beautiful human touches like, for example, when Jesus wept for his friend Lazarus, or when their encounter reveals a very warm relationship between himself and Martha and Mary.
Parable: Some years ago a book appeared, called Life After Life, which was closely followed by another book on the same subject. They dealt with what were called “near-death” experiences. To all intents and purposes, a person may be seen and be presumed to be dead and, then, through electric shock, or some such means of resuscitation, the heart is got pumping again and the person recovers. During that time, between the apparent death and the re-commencement of heart activity, the person had experienced what I have called the “near-death” experience. Many of these experiences had a great deal in common. They experienced themselves outside the body, looking down at the body. They were conscious of being drawn towards a tunnel of very bright light and, for those who travelled along that tunnel for any length, they could see pre-deceased relatives of theirs coming to meet them. One thing they all seemed to share in common was that, when the heart got going, and they had to return to the life they had known, they were disappointed and some of them were clearly annoyed. In general, it could be said that they lost all fear of death through the process, and were willing to face it again when the time came.
Teaching: Lazarus had gone through that experience, except he had gone all the way. In fact, he was dead for four days. I am in no position to make a comment, but I can only presume that, on his return, he had no memory of his experience. Don't forget, Lazarus was brought back to life. Unlike Jesus, at a later stage, Lazarus still had to travel down that same road. In a way, you could say that Jesus didn't do him any great favour. I can understand the strong response of Jesus when he met the widow of Naim going to bury her only son. It is normal for a child to bury a parent, but it is never easy for a parent to have to bury a child. Lazarus, Martha, and Mary were special friends of Jesus; so much so that Jesus wept at Lazarus” graveside. They were tears of love, not tears of despair. Grief is the price you pay for love. If you never want to cry at a funeral, then don't ever love anyone. That would be a very high price to pay to avoid something that is essentially part of life itself.
There is obviously a plan and purpose in all this. After all, Jesus had plenty of warning, but he seems to have deliberately held out going straight to Bethany. Even when he knew that Lazarus was dead, he said “Lazarus is dead. And for your sake, I am glad that I was not there, because this will give you another opportunity to believe in me. Come, let's go see him.” It is hard to imagine that Jesus let Lazarus die just to strengthen his disciples” belief in him by raising Lazarus to life again. I don't pretend to know why it happened as it did, but I can hazard one possibility. Jesus was with people in a particular place and, because they took up his full attention, he wasn't about to run off and leave them just because Lazarus was sick. Lazarus was his friend, but these people were also very important to him, because God has no favourites. Having let nature take its course, and discovering that Lazarus was dead, he went to be with his friends Martha and Mary in their hour of grief. Seeing their grief, and experiencing his own sense of loss, he raised Lazarus from the dead. He did this because he had the power to do this. It would effect good in the lives of many people, apart from Lazarus himself. It would strengthen the faith of his apostles and especially would it have a direct foreshadowing significance in the fact that he himself was soon to die. Through Lazarus, Jesus was preparing his apostles was what was to come. When he spoke of his own death, he always added that he would rise again.
The core message of today's gospel is in the words Jesus addressed to Martha. “l am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die like everyone else, will live again. They are given eternal life for believing in me, and will never perish. Do you believe this, Martha?” Martha's answer was direct, and to the point. “Yes, Lord,” she told him. “I have always believed that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who has come into the world from God.” Do you believe this? This is the question each of us must answer. Everyone of us has to deal with death as part of life, both for ourselves and for those around us. After the consecration of the Mass, we often use the words, “Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life. Lord, by your cross and resurrection you have set us free.” Today we have to face up to what those words really mean, ask ourselves if we believe what we say.
Response: Jesus came to remove the weeds from the good wheat. He came to remove those things in human nature that were not part of the Father's creation. Sin, sickness, and death are not part of God's creation. When the farmer, in another story in the gospel, was asked where the weeds had come from, he replied that an enemy had done this. (The word Satan means enemy.) When the workers volunteered to pull up the weeds, the farmer said that he would take care of them himself because, in attempting to pull up the weeds, they would damage the wheat in the process. Today's gospel clearly points and highlights the fact of the control that Jesus had over death. On many occasions, he had shown his power and authority, when he ordered Satan to depart, either from him or out of the souls and the lives of others. God is the origin and the giver of all life, and only God can manage, control, and restore life, as he chooses. For you and me, life is not manageable. Life is a very precious gift, entrusted to each of us by God. That is why it is the duty of the Christian to respect and protect life, at all levels, at all ages, and at all stages. God is most certainly pro-life.
There are a few occasions in the gospels when we are told that Jesus wept. I'm sure we all accept that Jesus was a really genuine, authentic, and sincere person. If he wept, it was surely because of some deep emotion, stirred up by love, hurt, or sadness. We might find it easier to accept the fact that Jesus could raise the dead than to believe he could weep like any one of us. It can be so easy for us to forget the fact that, in taking on our humanity, he experienced everything of what it is to be human. I don't believe I can have any meaningful personal relationship with Jesus until I am ready and willing to accept him as walking beside me in life, and sharing with me in all of the struggles, the tensions, and the other aspects of human living. It can be difficult to imagine that Jesus is interested, and would love to be involved in even the smallest undertaking of my life. He came so that he could be a totally down-to-earth God, but I can easily slip into the mentality of keeping him at a distance, and see myself as working to get to where he is. Just imagine a circle with Jesus in the middle, and I am at the edge of the circle. I want to get to him, but between where he is and where I am, I can see many obstacles, sins, weaknesses, etc. If I could only just get rid of those, I would arrive at the centre, bloodied but unbowed, and then, perhaps, Jesus could pin a medal on me and say, “Well done.” That, of course, is absolute heresy. The whole purpose of Jesus coming was that I could actually begin with him, just as I am, whether that means going straight to the centre of the circle, or allowing him join me on the edge. It is only with him, and alongside him that any change for the better can happen in my life.
There is a lot of material for reflection, for teaching, and for prayer in today's gospel, but I will mention just one more. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, but Lazarus would have died again within a very short while, because he was bandaged from head to toe, and he would have smothered. Jesus turned to those around him and asked them to complete his work, “Unwrap him and let him go.” This is a very good example of how Jesus involves us directly in his work. We all know people who need to be freed from bondage of one kind or another. They need affirmation, confirmation, encouragement, and a sense of their own worth before they can begin to experience freedom again. In my dealing with others, I can lift them up or put them down. I can be Jesus' touch-person in their lives and, while it is he alone who can give them new life, I can help complete his work, and greatly enable their freedom.
Practical: In my life up till now have I taken time out to reflect on the reality of death, on the finality of my own death? I don't mean this as a morbid exercise. I mean it as a very practical and realistic approach to life itself, which inevitably includes death. I have a very strong feeling that when I face up to my fear about dying, I will overcome many of my fears about living. I don't have any doubt about life after death, nor do I question that, or concern myself too much about it. I am, however, quite concerned about life before death. Everybody dies, but not everybody lives. Some people settle for existing and, when they do die, you might require a doctor's certificate for assurance, because there was never much life there at any time. You could write on the tombstone, “Died at forty, buried at eighty.'
Give some thought to the fact that Jesus wept. They were tears of love, not tears of despair. Later on he himself would struggle with his own death. The birth pains at the beginning of life are repeated at the end, when we are born into that third and final stage of life. The first birth is often followed by post-natal depression, while that second birth is followed by bereavement. The cord is cut one last time. It can be difficult to say goodbye, and some people hate goodbyes. When I die, and catch up with those who have gone before me, I won't have to say goodbye again. Jesus wept, because even for a brief while he was separated from a very dear friend. A good friend is one of the most precious gifts of life. Think of Jesus as a good friend, as a very very good friend. He himself uses the words as he speaks to us, “you are my friends I feel certain that every one of us here could think of someone whom we could help on the way to personal freedom. I am thinking of very simple ways, like a word of encouragement, an hour of our time, a remembrance of a birthday or an anniversary. They are people who may not be ready to ask for, or accept help. I can watch someone destroy himself with alcohol, and I can do absolutely nothing until that person is ready and willing to face up to reality. The most I can do for others is to heal sometimes, to help often, and to care always. I honestly believe that when I am ready and willing to help, that the Lord will send people in my path. “The greatest among you are those who serve,” Jesus said. If you want to be great in the kingdom of God, then become a basin of water and towel person, as Jesus showed when he washed the feet of his disciples.
Story: The Greek writer Plutarch tells the following story about Alexander the Great. One day Alexander came upon Diogenes the ancient philosopher, and he was examining some bones. He had two sets of human bones in two separate boxes. When Alexander asked him what he was doing, he said he was reflecting on some of the more important lessons of life. “For example,” said Diogenes, “the two sets of bones here are those of your father, and of one of his slaves. I have examined them now for some time, and I honestly must confess that I cannot find any difference between them."
John Quincy Adams, at 80 years of age, was shuffling along - · outside his house one day, when a neighbour greeted him with the question, “And how is Mr John Quincy Adams this morning?” The old man replied, “John Quincy Adams himself is very well, thank you. But the home he lives in is sadly dilapidated. It is tottering on its foundations. The walls are badly shaken, the roof is worn. The building trembles, and shivers with every wind, and I'm afraid John Quincy Adams will soon have to move Out of it, move on, and change residence and address. But he himself is very well."






In the place of Lazarus
(Alex McAllister)

It seems a bit strange that the Church presents us with this gospel reading today on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, it seems to be clearly about the resurrection and yet we haven't got there yet, we are still plodding through Lent and have to get through Maundy Thursday and Good Friday before we get to the resurrection. What's going on; have the Church's liturgical engineers got it all wrong?
Can I suggest that this text is more about death than resurrection? After all, Lazarus isn't walking around today; he had to undergo another death. This text is more about our life and death here and now rather than about the resurrection. We will have time enough to consider the resurrection when we get to Easter Sunday and the weeks of celebration afterwards.
St Ignatius in his book on the Spiritual Exercises suggests that when we come to consider a particular Gospel passage we should put ourselves in the place of each character in turn and use our imagination to see how we would feel in the circumstances. This can be a most revealing exercise.
How about putting yourself in the place of Lazarus? You are dead to everything and then you hear a voice: 'Come out, Lazarus.' You look around and there you are lying in a tomb swathed in bandages and surrounded by darkness.
If we ask ourselves how we would feel the answer, of course, would be different for everyone but I think we might be surprised at how many would say: Thanks Lord, but I'd prefer to stay where I am.
But putting ourselves in Lazaruss place we might feel we are unable to move or perhaps we might become aware of how tomb-like our present way of life really is. This exercise might arouse in us a sense of hope; rekindle a longing for freedom which has perhaps been buried for years.
Putting ourselves into the place of a character from scripture can awake all kinds of thoughts within us and lead us to turn to God in prayer with new words on our lips. And yet it is something so simple that we are surprised that we never thought about it ourselves.
I think that this Gospel reading is placed here in Lent to help us to realise that we have to live this life to the full and that it is often only through experiencing death that we are shocked into it. This can happen to us in all sorts of ways; often it can happen through a loss or bereavement, it might be through a religious experience, or a meeting with someone significant. It may be a terrible mistake that we have made or an experience of suffering. It is amazing how often it takes something negative to make us realise how much there is that is truly positive and worth living for.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the great writer and great Christian, was implicated in a plot to assassinate the Tsar of Russia. He was not one of the plotters but he was on the fringes of a group that wanted to overthrow the established order. The plot was uncovered and he was arrested and tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. He put in an appeal even though the chances of getting a reprieve were non-existent.
In the meantime he was sent to a prison camp in Siberia where he experienced some of the harshest conditions known to man. His appeal was turned down and he was given a date for execution. The day came round and he was put up against the wall to be shot. But at the very last moment a messenger arrived with word from St Petersburg, his sentence was commuted to four years penal servitude.
Dostoyevsky experienced a resurrection. He was a dead man; the book he wrote about his prison life is called 'Scenes from the House of the Dead', and the title literally sums up his experiences. He was dead; he regarded himself dead, because just waiting for death like that can be considered even worse than being dead. And then he was alive. And although he had to endure very harsh conditions he was alive, and he saw everything in a new way. He was able to live life to the full.
Dostoyevsky experienced life because he experienced death and this is what made him a truly great writer. A writer who has been able to get inside our souls and in his writing has explored some of our deepest feelings and emotions.
This gospel is not here on this Sunday to get us to focus on the resurrection of the body and life everlasting; that comes on Easter Day. This Gospel is here to get us to wake up from our sleep and to realise that we have some living to do. We are supposed to be Christians. We are supposed to be followers of Jesus, the best man who ever lived, the only man who ever fully lived. The only man who really understood how to live.
And if we dare to accept the title Christian then we had better take a few lessons in living. We had better stop moaning and groaning and looking over our shoulder at others and saying: Would you look at her, who does she think she is?
Stop putting a wet blanket over everything and live a bit. God has given us this wonderful creation and all these wonderful people around us, so let us open our eyes and talk to our neighbours and enjoy ourselves.
We see the signs of spring all around us, and yet it is we who should be the signs of spring to our neighbours and friends and workmates all through the year.
But, of course, this is very hard for us. We have had years of training not to get above ourselves, not to think well of ourselves, not to enjoy ourselves. And the Church itself, with its penchant for rules and regulations, has played its full part in this process. Most of us have long experience of being pressed down and having our individuality and creativity squashed out of us.
I can give you countless examples of people who have experienced a resurrection in their lives. Our own previous Provincial was a dead man. He had a heart operation which took ten hours. Now he sees things very differently.
I know a man who lost his wife and one of his own legs in a car accident. He had four young children. But he was determined to do his best for them. He told me: 'I painted that skirting board lying on my belly.' He brought those children up and is so proud of them it is unbelievable. He walked two miles each week to cheer up someone else who had lost a leg and was in the depths of depression.
There are dozens of examples. And we have a few in the Gospel today, apart from Lazarus himself. Look at Martha and Mary; they both blamed Jesus for letting Lazarus die. Sounds incredible doesn't it? And yet it is there in the text. But when they hear Jesus speak their faith is restored.
But as we say Sunday after Sunday: We don't experience Christ in a vacuum. We don't find him when things are bowling along as usual and we are keeping our head down. We meet him in suffering, we meet him in encounters with others, we meet him in challenging situations, we meet him when we are vulnerable, we meet him basically when our defences are down and we are open and receptive.
And he shows us the way. And the way is to be like him. And that means getting close to people, it means living for others, it means healing the sick, it means carrying other peoples burdens, it means loving the poor, it means being close to the Father in prayer, it means dying to self so we can rise to new life in him.
I heard about a sign outside a funeral parlour in Brooklyn it said: Why walk around half dead when we can bury you for seventy-five bucks?
The question we need to ask is: Why walk around half dead when we have new life in Christ?






Ready for a Miracle?
(Munachi Ezeogu)

Of all the miracles Jesus did, the raising of Lazarus ranks as the most astonishing to the people of his time. Traditional Jewish belief had it that the soul of a dead person somehow remains with the body for three days. After three days the soul departs finally from the body never to return, and that is when corruption sets in. When Martha objects to the opening of the tomb and says, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days” (John 11:39), she is expressing the common view that this is now a hopeless situation. Is that why Jesus delayed coming to the funeral, to let the situation become “impossible” before acting on it? G.K. Chesterton once said, “Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all.” In traditional Jewish mentality bringing back to life a person who is already four days dead and decaying is as unthinkable as Ezekiel vision of grey, dry bones are restored to life.
For the early Christians the story of the raising of Lazarus was more than a pointer to the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus rose on the third day; his body never saw corruption. For them this miracle is a challenge to never give up hope even in the hopeless situations in which they found themselves as individuals, as a church or as a nation. It is never too late for God to revive and revitalise a person, a church or a nation. But first we must learn to cooperate with God.
How can we cooperate with God so as to experience God's resurrection power in our lives and in our world? Well, everyone knows the answer already: faith. But that is not the point that John makes in this story. In fact there is no one in the story, not even Mary or Martha, who believed that Jesus could bring Lazarus back to life after four days dead. No one expected him to do it, so expectant faith is not the emphasis here. Rather the emphasis in the story on how we cooperate with a miracle-working God is placed on practical obedience and doing God's will.
To effect the miracle, Jesus issues three commands and all of them are obeyed to the letter. That is how the miracle happens. First, “Jesus said, 'Roll away the stone.' ? So they rolled away the stone” (vv 39-41). Did the people understand why they should do this heavy work of rolling away the tombstone to expose a stinking corpse? You bet they didn't. But it was their faith in Jesus expressing itself not through intellectual agreement with Jesus but through practical agreement with him, through obedience. Why didn't Jesus command the stone to roll away of its own accord without bothering the people? We don't quite know. All we know is that divine power seems always to be activated by human cooperation and stifled by non-cooperation. As C.S. Lewis said, “God seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures.” God will not do by a miracle what we can do by obedience.
The second command Jesus gives is directed to the dead man: “'Lazarus, come out.' and the dead man came out” (vv 43-44). We do not know the details of what transpired in the tomb. All we know is that Jesus' word of command is followed by immediate obedience. Lazarus gropes his way out of the dark tomb even with his hands and feet tied up in bandages, and his face all wrapped up. Even a man rotting away in the tomb can still do something to help himself.
The third command again is addressed to the people, “Unbind him, and let him go” (v44). Even though Lazarus could stumble himself out of the tomb, there was no way he could unbind himself. He needs the community to do that for him. By unbinding Lazarus and setting him free from the death bands the community is accepting Lazarus back as one of them.
Many Christian individuals and communities today have fallen victim to the death of sin. Many are already in the tomb of hopelessness and decay, in the bondage of sinful habits and attitudes. Nothing short of a miracle can bring us back to life in Christ. Jesus is ready for the miracle. He himself said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Are we ready to cooperate with him for the miracle. Are we ready to roll away the stone that stands between us and the light of Christ's face? Are we ready to take the first step to come out of the place of death? Are we ready to unbind (i.e. forgive) one another and let them go free?