Happy Friday, Everybody!
On this second to last Little Lenten Triduum, before the Great Triduum begins in two weeks on Good Friday, we are given for the Sunday Gospel the familiar story of Jesus’ raising of Lazarus. I thought last week’s reading was long, but this one is longer! Including the full text is making my emails too extensive, with not enough space left for reflecting on the Gospel in the Light of the Grave. If you would like to read the Gospel in its entirety, you can do so here:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032226.cfm
I have a confession to make regarding this reading. We had a Halloween party almost twenty years ago and I think I might have scrambled up the faith a wee bit for a few of the children. My wife read the story of Lazarus and when she said, “Lazarus, come out!” I popped out of a coffin/blanket chest that she was sitting next to and that nobody knew I was in. That much was okay, but along with being wrapped in some linens I was also wearing a pair of weird rubber zombie gloves to give a more startling effect. One 6-year-old attendee swallowed his gum. I shouldn’t have worn those gloves.
Now, for today’s Friday musings, I would like to simply pull-out Jesus’ question to Lazarus’ sister, Martha, when he says to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
Jesus speaks these words to Martha after she professes faith in the resurrection to come at the last day. He tells her that he is the resurrection and that anyone who believes in him shall never die. I highlight this to gently suggest to you, and to me, that the fright of death we experience is largely borne of our fallen, terror-fed, imaginations and not based in what is actually taking place. And I would say that our imaginations have been corrupted by our lazy acquiescence to an unbelieving culture in what we read, watch and listen to – manufactured for us by a despondent, misery-loving-company anti-communion of a culture of death.
As a thought experiment, let’s reverse Jesus’ words:
“…he who doesn’t believe in me, though he live, yet shall he die, and whoever dies and doesn’t believe in me shall never live…”
We were created for True Communion-- to be fully alive with God and through him, heart to heart, with each other for eternity, and more intimately than we can imagine. So intimate are we meant to be with each other that the very Resurrection and Life himself wept over witnessing the pain of the brief, four-day, separation of Lazarus from his kin. That is Heaven. But, in this fallen world, under the rule of its prince, the anti-communion that I write of is one where it often happens that the closer we are together, the more alien we become to one-another. So, back to those gloves – let’s fix our attention on Jesus and not the living dead, that way our startled stomachs will not be so full of bubblegum that we have little room for the Bread of Life who came to feed us, together, at his eternal banquet table.