My name is Don and I’ve been a Catholic priest now for over 50 years, and during that time I keep going back to the same readings over and over again, only to discover that they contain something I never understood was there before. It gives me new enthusiasm and excitement for the message that keeps revealing itself, and I pray that the message that I’m sending you will be valuable. And if you find it so, please share these podcasts with your friends. Thank you. Good morning. Today we celebrate the fifth Sunday of Lent.
As I’ve mentioned to you before, we’re using Cycle A of the readings, the Opening Prayer. By your help, we beseech you, Lord our God, may we walk eagerly in that same charity with which, out of love for the world, your son to hand himself over to death through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen. A reading from the Old Testament from the book of Ezekiel 37th, chapter 12 to the 14th verse. Thus says the Lord God, O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them and bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the Lord.
When I open your graves and have you rise from them, O my people, I will put my spirit in you that you may live, and I will settle you upon your land. Thus you shall know that I am the Lord I have promised and I will do it, says the Lord, the Word of the Lord. Responsorial Psalm with the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption. Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my voice.
In supplication with the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption. If you, O Lord, mark my iniquities, Lord, who can stand? But with you is forgiveness that you may be revered. With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption. I trust in the Lord, my soul trusts in his word. More than sentinels wait for the dawn, let Israel wait for the Lord.
With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption. For with the Lord is kindness, and with him is plenteous redemption, and he will redeem Israel from all their iniquities. With the Lord there is mercy and the fullness of redemption. A reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans 8:11 Brothers and sisters, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh.
On the contrary, you are in the spirit. If only the Spirit of God dwells in you. Whoever does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness. 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 also through his spirit dwelling in you. The word of the Lord.
The verse before the Gospel. I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord. Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will never die. The gospel for this Sunday is taken from St. John, 11th chapter, first through the 45th verse. Now, a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany, in the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and dried his feet with her hair. It was her brother Lazarus who was ill. So the sisters sent word to him, saying, master, the one you love is ill. When Jesus heard this, he said, this illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God. The Son of God will also be glorified through it. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
So when he heard that he was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was. Then. After this, he said to his disciples, let us go back to Judea. The disciples said to him, rabbi, the Jews were trying to stone you, and you want to go back there. Jesus answered, are there not 12 hours in a day? If one walks during the day, he does not stumble because he sees the light of this world.
But if one walks at night, he stumbles because the light is not in him. He said this and then told him, our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him. So the disciples said to him, master, if he is asleep, he will be saved. But Jesus was talking about his death. Well, they thought he meant ordinary sleep. So then Jesus said to them, clearly, lazarus has died.
And I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him. So Thomas called Didymus said to his fellow disciples, let us also go to die with him. When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now, Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away. And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother.
When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him. But Mary sat at home. Martha said to Jesus, lord, if you’d been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you Ask of God. God will give you. Jesus said to her, your brother will rise.
Martha said to him, I know he will rise in the resurrection. On the last day. Jesus told her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?
She said to him, yes, Lord. I’ve come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world. When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary secretly saying, the Teacher is here and he’s asking for you. As soon as she heard this, she rose quickly and went to him. For Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still where Martha had met him. So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out.
They followed her, presuming was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his knees and said to him, lord, if you had been here, my brother would never have died. Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping. He became perturbed and deeply troubled and said, where have you laid him? They said to him, sir, come and see. And Jesus wept.
So the Jews said, see how he loved him. But some of them said, could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so this man would not have died? So Jesus, perturbed again came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. Jesus said, take away the stone, Martha. And the dead man’s sisters said to him, lord, by now there will be a stench.
He’s been dead for four days. Jesus said to her, did I not tell you, if you believe, you will see the glory of God? So they took away the stone. And Jesus raised his eyes and said, father, I thank you for hearing me. I know you always hear me, but because the crowd here I’ve said this that they may believe that you sent me. And when he had said this, he cried out in a loud voice, lazarus, come out.
The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands and his face wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, untie him and let him go. Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seeing what he had done, began to believe in him. The Gospel of the Lord. Sam Sa this set of readings is the end of the five most important gospels I think that we have in order to ponder and understand who we are in this life with God. We saw Jesus work out his humanity in that first Sunday.
And then there was the revelation that God in a human being becomes light. And a person filled with God is enlightened and brings light into others. And then there was a beautiful image of forgiveness in the woman at the well, where her sins didn’t limit in any way, shape or form, God pouring his life into her like life giving water. And then there was the man born blind. And it’s about the presence of God in our lives where this inner life becomes a beacon for other people and opens our own eyes to see exactly who we are and why we’re here. And then the whole notion comes together of all these images.
It comes together in this one image of this miracle, incredible miracle of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. So it’s all about us understanding the indwelling presence of God. What’s it for? What does it do? It brings life. But the greatest of all mysteries that God wants us to ponder and finally surrender to is the life that we’re promised only comes after death.
The life that he promises only comes after death. And what does that mean? Well, somehow the things in life that cause death, let’s call it sin, lies, pain, suffering, that comes to us, those kind of things that are really frightening to the human spirit. And we tend to blame God for them. And we say, why are these things happening to us? And.
And what we’re not understanding fully yet until we embrace this fullness of the who. Jesus is the best clue we have to who we are. That we have a journey, a way, a process to go through, which is to surrendering our way of seeing, our way of knowing the life of knowing life. Of all the illusions, let go of all the lies. If we, if we do that, we can enter into life. And one of the biggest lies that we can get caught up in is somehow misunderstanding the role of God in our life.
What’s he fear for? And most of us say, well, he’s a lover, he’s a God who’s come to save me. He’s going to bring me into life. So that means that then when things are difficult for us and we struggle with them, where do we turn? We turn to God. God, help me, please.
This is killing me. This is destroying me. This thing happened to me or it may happen to me. And I need your protection. I need your care. I need your power in me over the evil that is in the world so I’ll be immune from being harmed by it.
I won’t be harmed. And Jesus listens to that plea. And as a lover, human, fully human lover and also divine lover together, because God gave into this man, Jesus, such compassion, understanding for people. He has to teach us this lesson that’s in this gospel, so powerfully presented. He has a friend, Lazarus, and he is going to die. And so typically, just like you might call to God, if someone you know and you love is dying, help them, please, God, don’t let them die.
Heal them of whatever is that’s killing them. If it’s not a disease, if it’s a problem of some kind of harm that was done to them that robs them of life, whatever it is, God take it away. Take it away. And so they sent word to Jesus and hoped he would come to heal Lazarus so he wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t die. And we begin to feel something in this story that, wait a minute, if Jesus is saying, no, I’m not going to go, I’m going to stay here and wait.
Because this death that Lazarus is going to go through is not simply about him dying. It’s about something I need to reveal to everyone. And it’s one of the hardest things that I can have. It’s one of the most difficult things I think Jesus must have felt that he had to do when he had to teach people that in order to find the life that God promises you, God is going to ask you to die to something, and it’s going to feel like a real death. And so the story is unfolding and you see that he gets to Martha and Mary, and the two of them say the same thing when they greet him. Finally, they say, if you’d have been here, my brother would never have died.
And I don’t know if I can capture what I feel is in that statement, but it’s something that I’ve said a million times to myself. I’ve heard people say it to me. If God is who God is, if God is the God that’s going to take care of me, my baby is not going to die. He will not let that happen. How can he let something like that happen if he’s the loving God or the stories I’ve heard of people who have been abused and hurt and harmed by situations in their life where they’ve been treated so badly and scars are so deep. And they ask me, why did God allow this to happen to me when I was a child, when I was innocent?
And the answer that comes is not very comforting. Initially, it’s because the answer is going to be because that is what had to happen in order for life to enter into you, that had to happen in order for life to enter into you. And so Lazarus had to die in this situation. And when that death was experienced by everyone around, and there was a longing inside of so many there that said, where was this guy? He healed the blind man. Why is he not here doing the same thing for his best friend, Lazarus?
You know, what’s wrong with this Messiah figure that we’re supposed to believe in, this loving figure? He doesn’t seem to really care about us enough. And just as they’re thinking he doesn’t care, there’s this manifestation in this story of Jesus looking at all of this, and he’s deeply, deeply troubled. And he starts to cry. Now, what is troubled inside of him? The word perturbed is a very interesting word.
I had to look it up in my Oxford English Dictionary. And it means not just being confused or upset, but having some kind of major crisis inside of two conflicting ideas. And it’s disturbing, like an earthquake going on. It was like, could have been. This is Jesus, humanity wanting so badly to be the person that these people needed him to be, wanted him to be, but he couldn’t be, because he was there. Not to reveal what a human being might want to do, but what only a divine God can do in terms of seeing the future and knowing everything and knowing, why does this have to happen in this way?
And no human being knows the mysterious way in which death and surrender and submission transforms not only the person, but the world, which is the great mystery of suffering. So he’s weeping and crying and feeling disturbed, and maybe he’s wondering about whether or not he was effective. Maybe. I mean, he looked at all these people. They didn’t seem to really understand him. His disciples, you know, they still didn’t fully understand him.
He knew that. He knew that once this miracle was performed, he was going to go back to Jerusalem and he was going to be humiliated. And what was going to be the reaction? Jesus knew in his gut probably that they didn’t really yet fully understand who he was. And they wouldn’t understand the crucifixion until Pentecost. So just I can.
I think I want you to feel that. That. That human emotion inside of him. I’d like to fix it, but I want you to see this. I want you to understand this. And it’s hard.
And I know it’s hard. And so he prays out loud to his Father, which is unusual for a miracle. He says, father, Father, I want you to Help me do this. I want you to help me convince these people of what this is about. And I know you’ll do that. And so it was almost like Jesus the man saying, I’m going to turn this over to God.
I’m going to make everybody here, them realize that I am not doing this as a human being, I’m turning it over to God. And God is going to do this miraculous thing of turning this death of this man into something so life giving that the only way I can show it to you and describe it to you is the very death that we’re here to mourn and to weep. Think of that as a symbol of all the things that we think will destroy us comes back to life. He isn’t dead. He didn’t die. It’s like if you’ll accept the things that feel like a death inside of you and surrender to them and allow God to do what he’s doing through a death that he promises will bring life.
When you can do that, you are going to experience the life on the other side of surrendering to that need that you have for a nice clear explanation of where was God when I was so deeply harmed? Or why would God let this happen to someone that I love so much? Or why would he allow me, as a parent, a young parent, go through a disease where I’m ripped away from my family? How can you ask me to do that and believe that somehow it is for life? Well, the witness of this moment in Christ’s life for all of us, meaning watching it, how we watch it, has got to be to see in it the mystery that is so essential to living with the indwelling presence of God. Because it’s not going to free you from everything that’s harmful or painful or confusing.
But what an incredible promise he does make that everything that is confusing, dark, hard, difficult, has within it the potential of life that is manifested in this miracle. But then it becomes explosive when we see Jesus on a cross, his hands outstretched, you know, horizontally, his body vertical, and we see in this crucifix this divinity zooming down into this heart of God. This divinity enters and it connects with this humanity. And the human being filled with divinity has his arms outstretched to the world. And he’s just been treated so miserably by the world and by life. And he’s hanging there saying, father, I don’t want this to happen.
Why have you forsaken me? But I know it’ll bring life. I know it will. So forgive humanity for its doubts and fears. Let them feel what I feel, life flowing through me so strong that I will rise and change the world The Closing Prayer Father, in this season of Lent, we have opened our heart more fully to the mystery of who you are and the plan that you have created for each of us that brings us to the fullness of life. Open our eyes, fill us with an understanding of the depth of your love and your forgiveness.
Let us feel this new life coursing through our veins as we face the things that are difficult, answer the questions that are unanswerable in a sense by our minds, but can be accepted by a heart that is open to the mystery of how you are our God and the promises you’ve made to us. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen. The music in this program was composed and produced by Ryan Harner. I’m excited for the opportunity to awaken your spiritual journey. If you enjoy this program, please subscribe and share it with a friend. This ministry also needs your support, so make a one time or recurring tax deductible donation on our website.
Thank you so much for your listenership and your continued support. Without it, this program would not be possible.