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Discover the deeper meaning and connections found in this week's readings, through these great commentaries written by our priests.
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Mary and Martha had to wait. Are you good at waiting? Consider some of the waits which we all experience. Distinguish between the trivial and the most demanding: from waiting at the supermarket check-out, to sitting by the bedside of someone close to death.
Why did Jesus make Mary and Martha wait? How did they use their waiting time? Mary and Martha told Jesus that Lazarus, their brother, His friend, was very ill. Jesus waited two days more before heading off to see them. Martha tetchily asked Jesus, when He finally arrived: ‘If you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ She also knows Jesus well enough to follow up immediately by saying: ‘... but I know that, even now, whatever you ask of God, he will grant you.’
Waiting can be a remarkable test of human endurance. But, when our faith is tested, it can prove very strong. ‘... but I know that, even now, whatever you ask of God, he will grant you.’
No experience is wasted, unless we choose to waste it. Waiting can help us to develop a sense of detachment from passing things, to distinguish between what matters and what does not.
If we waste the experience of waiting we can mortgage this present moment to an unknown moment yet to come.
We can start to live provisionally. This is to waste our time and our lives. Goodness and hope come from this moment and help to build the future. If, here and now, we only feel anxiety or impatience, fear or failure, we build tomorrow on shaky foundations.
Consider Maya Angelou’s wonderful tweet: This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before! Whatever is happening now should not be lost because our eye is on the future.
The Psalmist understands the depth of feeling that can accompany waiting:
My soul is waiting for the Lord. I count on his word.
My soul is longing for the Lord more than watchman for daybreak. Psalm 129 (130)
How did Jesus wait in the garden, in Gethsemane? We are very close to hearing this in Holy Week. Waiting can be a real agony. Jesus used this miracle of raising Lazarus to teach the central lesson of our faith in Him:
‘I am the resurrection and the life.
If anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live,
and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ (John 11)
St Paul writes a teaching very much to this point: … if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, then he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your own mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you. (Romans)
Our life of waiting is a rehearsal for eternal life. It is not a commodity that is being consumed as our waiting time expires. Consider those things and events for which we have to wait.
How much energy do you waste on impatience? How much better could that energy be used? If you wait impatiently, how does this sap your resources? How does your impatience affect your neighbour … whom you profess to love?
Consider the ripple effect, the consequence, of your impatience; many an example can be drawn from bad driving or domestic disputes. What was the outcome for Mary and Martha at the end of their tetchy wait? The raising of Lazarus points us to eternal life as the final end of our life of waiting. So we have every reason to wait for the Lord and most of all to wait in hope!
So what kind of being is the resurrected Lazarus?
These days, to think ‘raising from the dead’ is to think ‘zombie’ or some other manner of horrific half life. Face it: ‘resurrection’ to many people is scary.
So does this story of Jesus raising his dead friend have anything to say to us?
Well, Lazarus is human enough to have dinner with Jesus later. So we must assume that he resumes his normal human existence.
That suggests that the story is not really about Lazarus at all, but is some sort of symbolic, mystical narrative, and we may read it as such in order to discern its true focus which is, of course, Jesus Himself.
And that focus is His words to Martha.
She adopts the Pharisees’ doctrine that all the dead will rise at the last day, the ‘Day of the Lord.’ But Jesus draws her up short. ‘I AM the resurrection - do you believe this?’ He challenges her conventional consolations with the immediacy of Himself, here and now, He who is resurrection and eternal life.
And that’s the immediacy of His encounter with the dead Lazarus. This is the point: no one can remain dead in the presence of the One who is Life itself.
No one can presume to end in death in the presence of Him who is eternal life, the victor over death.
No one is bound by death in the presence of Life
It’s the working out of the Divine Name ‘I AM' (Ex.3:14). This riddling of the verb ‘to be’ is the only true name we have. And it is not so much a name, rather a joyous and totally unfettered declaration of absolute being and utter freedom: the one ‘Who is and who was and who is to come' (Rev.1:8; 4:8).
None can lie as dead in the presence of the Name, because ‘In Christ shall all be made alive' (1 Cor. 15:22). 'All will stand before the Name, called like the dead man today: ‘Lazarus, come forth!' ' (Jn.11:43).
In the Fourth Gospel this is the event which precipitates the Passion of Jesus. Paradoxically it also announces His resurrection. How can He who is Life itself remain bound by death and the grave?
So whatever kind of death you are in (and there are many sorts of death), whatever denial of life, whatever diminishment of living, whatever slavery, or lessening or depriving of humanity binds your hands and feet: the word is ‘Awake, sleeper and rise from the dead,’ and Christ shall be your life.
Do you have questions about the liturgy and how we are called to participate in it? Explore how the Church councils, saints, and popes have answered this key question and many more.
Every movement of the Mass is rich in meaning but we can become over-familiar with it. Rediscover the Mass and explore how it relates to the Exodus story, where many of its rituals come from, and how it makes Jesus present to us today.
