At the cross stood the mournful mother weeping…It is by sharing in the sorrow of the Mother, that we can enter into the sufferings of the Son, in order to experience the Joy of the Resurrection.

Fifth Sunday in Lent. April 6th, 2014

In this last Sunday before we begin Holy Week, as next Sunday we will celebrate Palm Sunday, we continue with accounts of Jesus performing signs before He enters Jerusalem, and so enters into the hour of His passion. Today, we hear of the last public miracle of Jesus and it’s very dramatic to say the least: Jesus raises a man from the dead…could you even begin to image what that must have been like, to witness such an event? Like last Sunday’s account of the healing of the man born blind, this account includes many paradoxes. And these paradoxes lead us to the greatest paradox of all times, the paradox of the Cross-of our Lord Jesus Christ, which we will celebrate in the Liturgy of Holy Week.

As in the story of the man born blind we heard last week, Jesus again seems to have ignored a poor man’s plight by passing him by. Again, Jesus has His gaze on the heart of a man and sees a man open to faith. Last week the blind man regains his sight and becomes a disciple of Jesus by “seeing through the gift of faith who Jesus really is, while those who are able to see, are really blind because they don’t “see,” that is, don’t have faith; they refuse to accept the truth about Jesus (that He is God, equal to the Father), and so they reject God’s grace being offered to them in order that they would repent and change their lives for the better.

As He did with the blind man, this week Jesus again uses an opportunity to paradoxically manifest Himself and His divinity by a miracle in order to show forth the goodness and the mercy of God. Jesus receives word that His dear friend Lazarus is ill-“Lord, he whom you love is ill.” Paradoxically, Jesus doesn’t stop everything and rush to his friend’s side: No, Jesus waits two days before He even leaves. In fact, by the time Jesus finally does arrive, Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days…(puew, very stinky)… Yet, even so, Jesus proclaims, “This illness is not unto death, it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by means of it.”

How will this be? How will the Father glorify the Son through the Sons failure to arrive in time? How can God be glorified in such evil as sickness and death; how can God be glorified in a stinking corpse? Well again the answer is found in paradox, the paradox of the raising of Lazarus. How could Jesus raise a man who was in the tomb for four days and was already quite decomposed? To such a question Jesus gives a response that we don’t expect: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Perhaps, we could have expected Jesus to ask for forgiveness for not coming right way, something like, “Please forgive me for arriving too late, I was delayed. You have my deepest sympathy for your lost.” Or, “I wish I could have done something.” These responses are certainly something we might say—they would be most appropriate for us; BUT FOR JESUS? I think not. I mean after all, Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?” It was His friend after all.

However, by saying, “I am the resurrection and the Life”, Jesus says something beyond the immediate understanding of Martha and Mary. How could Jesus be the resurrection and the life…How can someone be Resurrection or be Life Itself? In order to help them understand and to help their weak faith, and ours, Jesus calls out, “Lazarus, come out!” And even a dead man obeys Jesus, when most of the living will not.

As great as this miracle may have been, we have to understand that the resurrection of Lazarus is only a prefiguration of the true resurrection. It is more of resuscitation, for Lazarus would still die in the end—death in Lazarus case was not definitively beaten. Jesus himself however, would be the “first born from the dead.” And here is the paradox of all paradoxes-the Passion and death of the Christ. Jesus would have to pass through mankind’s greatest enemy- suffering and death in order to gain victory over it—By being defeated He would be victorious…And so, Jesus would be the very first man to truly rise from the dead and defeat death for good—the death of one wins victory over the death of the many.

And so, it is through His Passion and death that Jesus is glorified. One might think that the Glory of God would be revealed most fully in Jesus’ miracles or His teachings or His large number of disciples and even bigger crowds that would desire to see Him. Next week on Palm Sunday, we will read about His glorious triumphal entrance into Jerusalem. However, this triumphal procession is not the Glory of the Father to the Son. God’s glory would be and is actually revealed most fully in the suffering of the Son and in His obedience to the Father unto death, death on a cross,

Jesus dies the most ignominious death possible, a death reserved for only the most vile and corrupt of men; Jesus is crucified and his closest friends, the disciples, betray him and leave him in his hour of greatest need. Certainly not events that we might think would lead to glory; in fact, in the eyes of the world these events seem to be the ultimate failure.

Paradoxically, Jesus death really was the greatest failure the world really has ever seen, but because of His resurrection, it now has become the greatest victory the world has ever seen and will ever see. Never before had any man beaten death, and by this one man’s death, death has been beaten. By his stripes we have been heal, by His death we have saved…Jesus has shown us in His great sufferings the true meaning of the love…to sacrifice oneself for the sake of one’s friends. Jesus could have saved us with just an act of His will, but instead he chose to save us by the cross to show us how much he really love us.

And so Christ is the Victor-Love is stronger than death. Jesus not only has the power to raise a decomposed corpse, but He has the power to raise himself; and so, He has the power to raise those who believe in Him and love Him by faithfully following Him through His teachings and living for Him alone-Our faith is not in vain!

For those who, like Lazarus, die in friendship with Christ, they too will rise, thus sharing in Christ’s own victory over death. Yes, all friends of Christ will still have to pass through suffering and physical death. But by doing so with Christ by being faithful to Him by carrying their cross to the last, they too will defeat death for forever.

However the reverse is true as well, those who through unrepented sin live without friendship with Christ and His Church, though still living, are really the truly dead; their corpse may not stink, but their souls sure do (phuew); and if they die un-repented they will be dead forever, for forever they will be separated from Jesus who is the LIFE.

In these final weeks of Lent, we may be discouraged in our efforts to become holier. We may even feel “dead” on the inside. We may have prayed for Jesus to come and help us, as did Martha and Mary-“Lord, you know I love you, come and answer my prayers!” And yet, it may seem that we didn’t get an answer, that Jesus is “delayed.” Maybe we even thinking that perhaps I am not so loved as I think I am.”

Yet faith tells us that in this most common of our paradoxes in life, no matter what darkness we are in, no matter how much it seems that God has abandoned us—He has not; no, Jesus is present to us with all of His divine power and love ready to manifest, through our suffering and through us, the goodness and the Divine Mercy of God.

Faith tells us that through the Cross of Christ, if we share in His suffering and death, then in our weakness we are made strong. Belief in Jesus will not necessarily take our problems and sufferings away, and it will surely not save us from physical death; but faith in Him will, if we place our trust in His Divine Mercy, and love Him above else by faithfully following Him, it will save us from eternal death and give us a share in Christ’s own victory, bringing us eternal peace and joy.

But it doesn’t stop there; if we unite our struggles and our suffering and death to the power of Jesus’ cross, then through the power of His Resurrection, our lives and even our death will be used to bring souls who are dead to sin back to life in Christ. Then in the paradox of the cross we like Christ and in union with Him will manifest to the world the goodness and Divine Mercy of the God who is Love; God will be glorified through our lives and we ourselves will share in the glory that the Father has bestowed on the Son.

We celebrate liturgically the passion and death of our Lord during Holy Week; but we must never forget and always believe that it is re-presented, that is, made truly present to us at each and every Holy Mass. And so the resurrection and its power to save us is made truly present as well, but we can only access this Divine power and love through faith. Let us then open our hearts in faith to Jesus’ power to save us and through us to bring souls who are dead back to life.

Our Lord is not silent, He is not delayed, but comes here and now at this Mass, in this sacred place, in order to tell us that He alone is our hope; He does so through the Holy Eucharist, which is really Him! So as we come to the end of this Lenten season, may we trust that the paradoxes in our lives would be united to Jesus crucified in order that through the power of His death and Resurrection, available to us at Every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, our greatest paradoxes, our greatest crosses and defeats, would be turned into our greatest victories, leading to the Glory of God and the Sanctification and salvation of souls, both our own and others as well.

At the cross stood the mournful mother weeping…It is by sharing in the sorrow of the Mother, that we can enter into the sufferings of the Son, in order to experience the Joy of the Resurrection.
By the Cross with thee to stay,
there with thee to weep and pray,
is all I ask of thee to give.

Virgin of all virgins blest!,
Listen to my fond request:
let me share thy grief divine;

Let me, to my latest breath,
in my body bear the death
of that dying Son of thine.

Wounded with His every wound,
steep my soul till it hath swooned,
in His very Blood away;

Be to me, O Virgin, nigh,
lest in flames I burn and die,
in His awful Judgment Day.

Christ, when Thou shalt call me hence,
by Thy Mother my defense,
by Thy Cross my victory;

While my body here decays,
may my soul Thy goodness praise,
safe in paradise with Thee. Amen.