Catholic Matters

SUNDAY READINGS - 5th Sunday of Lent 

FIRST READING: Ezekiel 37:12-14. Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves, and raise you from your graves, 0 my people; and I will bring you home into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, 0 my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done it, says the Lord.

EXPLANATION: Ezekiel was a priest of the temple of Jerusalem up to 597 B.C., when he was deported to Babylon with the king Joachim and the first deportees. Among the exiles in Babylon he denounced the sins of the people which brought about the exile, and foretold greater misfortunes still for Judah. Jerusalem and its temple would be destroyed by the Babylonians, and the remainder of the people taken into captivity. They had deserted Yahweh; he would now desert them for a while. But Ezekiel, like Jeremiah and second-Isaiah his contemporaries, had words of encouragement also. Better days were to come, when Yahweh would take back his people once more and dwell in their midst forever (37 : 25). The verses taken from Ezekiel today are part of this encouragement.
Thus . . . God: The prophet is speakinhg for the Lord.
I will . . . graves: In the eleven verses preceding this passage the prophet has described how God through him, spoke to the dry bones of the Israelites and raised them up and gave them life once more. As is clear from verse 11, there is no question of resurrection of the body here: the dry bones are the exiled Israelites who say "our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost, we are clean cut off." Now God tells these despairing Israelites that all is not lost. He will give them a real life, not that of slavery, once more.
O my people: They are still his chosen people in spite of their neglect of him. He will give them a new spirit, a spirit of obedience once more.
and you shall live: Living in slavery in a foreign land was not life.
place . . . land: He will bring them back from exile and establish them in Judah again.
then . . . shall know: They will then realize that nothing short of the power of Yahweh could have done this for them.

APPLICATION: God revealed himself and his true nature to his Chosen People in the Old Testament by his actions more than by his words. They were a stubborn, stiff-necked people---they were so often ungrateful for all the benefits he conferred on them. They forgot him in material prosperity and only turned to him in need. The idolatry and misconduct of their kings ever since Solomon (with a few notable exceptions), and the no-less-pagan outlook of the majority of the people, brought on them the destruction of Jerusalem with its temple, the center of their life and religion, in the year 587. They had been warned by God's prophets but they turned a deaf ear to all remonstrances and warnings. When the foretold calamity fell they turned to Yahweh, but too late.

However, when they had done their penance in Babylon, Yahweh came to their aid once more and brought them back to Judah and Jerusalem, where they eventually rebuilt the city and their temple and where they remained until the promised Messiah came.

In all of this we have the merciful, forgiving God, revealing himself, while using this very ungrateful people to carry out his plan for raising the whole human race to adopted divine sonship through the loving mystery of the Incarnation.

We Christians have seen that plan fulfilled. We know we have been adopted by God and made heirs of heaven because Christ made himself our brother. We know too that we shall rise again from the dead and be brought back not to Judah or Jerusalem, but to the land of eternal happiness---to "the Jerusalem that is above." God revealed much of his divine qualities to the Jews, but how incomparably greater is the revelation we have received from him through the coming of Christ among us!

The Jews of that day had but a very vague idea of life after death; we are certain that our physical death is not the end for us but rather the beginning of our true life. The Jews called God their "father" but because of their infidelity the father-son relationship was a cold one, built more on fear than on love. We call God our Father, but we use the term with sincerity and love for we have become his children through the brotherhood of Christ, his real, divine Son.

God helped the Jews often in their temporal needs, they seldom sought spiritual aid from him. We have in the mystical body of Christ, his Church, all the spiritual helps we need for our journey to heaven, and temporal favors on innumerable occasions, during our stay on earth. God said of his Chosen People: "What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done for it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, what did it yield---wild grapes?"

Unfortunately, he has to make the same complaint of many in his Christian vineyard, and how much more has he done for them than he ever did for the Jews? God forbid that any one of us should be deserving of this complaint. When we meet him on the day of judgment let us hope and pray that we will have the true grapes of a virtuous life to offer him.

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SECOND READING: 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, if the Spirit of God really dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you.

EXPLANATION: On the Epistle to the Romans, see First Sunday of Advent.
in the flesh . . . God: St. Paul nearly always uses the word "flesh" for those tendencies in man which incline him to sin and to the things of this earth in opposition to things spiritual. The man who follows these inclinations (who lives according to the flesh) cannot please God, but rather offends him.
You are . . . flesh: He is addressing Christians who have died (to all their evil inclinations) with Christ in baptism. "Do you not know," Paul says (in Rom. 6:3-4), "that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death..."
you are . . . Spirit: The Holy Spirit has been given to the baptized. Through their union with Christ the Spirit is within believers, transforming their rational faculties; they live a new life.
Anyone . . . Christ: Paul uses the terms "Spirit of God," the "Spirit," the "Spirit of Christ" and "Christ" as interchange able terms to express the indwelling of God in the baptized. The man who has not this indwelling Spirit does not belong to Christ. He is not a Christian.
bodies . . . sin: Because the Christian has Christ dwelling in him (even though the Christian lives in a body which can be called "dead" because of its inclination to sin), he is alive with a true spiritual life because of the uprightness and divine grace which Christ brings to him.
spirit . . . Jesus: It was God the Father who raised Jesus from the dead. The Christian who has the Spirit of God dwelling in him will be raised from the dead by the same Spirit. His body doomed to die will be given a new mode of life---the risen Christian, like the risen Christ, will be given a new mode of existence, an unending life.

APPLICATION: The three readings for today, the Fifth Sunday of Lent, have a common theme---resurrection. In Ezekiel the release of the Jews from the captivity and slavery of Babylon is described as a rising from their graves to return to a new life in their own homeland. This is a metaphor, a type of the true resurrection which will come later. In the third reading---the gospel---we have the story of the raising of Lazarus from the tomb, which proves the power Jesus had of raising the dead.

In this second reading, in St. Paul's instruction to the Roman Christians, we have a direct reference to the future resurrection to a life of unending glory for all those who during their time on earth, were loyal to God and Christ. This resurrection in a new body, which will never again be subject to death or pain or suffering, has been won for us by Christ who, having died for our sins, was raised by the Father on Easter morning.

Only the kindness of an infinitely loving God could plan and provide such a marvelous future for us. "What is man that you are mindful of him?", the Psalmist says to God. What are we indeed---mere creatures, finite, limited beings, in comparison with the infinite Godhead! Yet, when creating us he gave us the spiritual faculties which enable us to appreciate the good, the beautiful and the perfect. He knew that in this life these powers could never be satisfied, and so he ordained that after "working our passage" through this valley of tears, a new life would await us, an unending life in which, in company with the Blessed Trinity, our blessed Mother and the millions of fellow-saints, we would have eternal contentment and happiness.

The thought of this glorious future should never be far from our minds. It was this thought that enabled the martyrs to face their executioners with joy in their hearts. It was this thought that made the saints rejoice in their bodily sufferings and mortifications. It was this hope of eternal happiness which spurred on the millions of ordinary men and women like ourselves, whose life on earth was a monotonous sequence of one drudgery after another, one misfortune following on the heels of the previous one.

It is by imitating these people that we too will join them when our call will come. It is by bearing the burdens of each day, by welcoming, and seeing God's will in all the ups and downs of our very ordinary lives, that we can join them. Listen again to these solemn words of St. Paul: "Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him." You have the Spirit of Christ in you, if you are striving to live a Christian life. This means taking each day as it comes, offering to God its joys and its sorrows, its honest pleasures and its pains, its sunshine and its showers. All this means: living in peace with God and with your neighbor. This may sound easy but it is not so; it will mean much self-denial, but then think of what awaits us at the end of our road---a resurrection to a new life, an unending life of happiness. God grant that we may all have this happy ending to our earthly journey.

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GOSPEL: John 11: 3-7; 17; 20-27; 33-45. (Shorter Form) The sisters of Lazarus sent to Jesus, saying "Lord, he whom you love is ill." But when Jesus heard it he said, "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."

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go into Judea again."

Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary sat in the house. Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day." Jesus said 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?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world." Jesus was deeply moved in spirit and troubled, and he said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus wept. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"

Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb; it was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. I knew that thou hearest me always, but I have said this on account of the people standing by, that they may believe that thou didst send me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him.

EXPLANATION: St. John gives us here the last and the greatest of the miracles worked by our Lord. It had two purposes: first, to prove that Christ was the Messiah, the Son of God to whom the Father was now testifying publicly by this miracle and secondly, to move the chief priests and Pharisees to carry out the plan they long since contemplated. This miracle took place a few miles from Jerusalem---within a few hours the Pharisees had news of it (11:46); they called a meeting and decided that Christ must be put to death. It was his Father's will that he should die at the Passover feast which was drawing near: he had completed his work; his "hour" had come and so in working this miracle, he gave them the extra motive and excuse for carrying out their wicked designs. Christ's death, like the illness of Lazarus, would be for the glory of God, manifested in him. His raising of Lazarus was but for a short extra period of earthly life; his own resurrection would be the first fruits of the eternal resurrection which he would win for all those who would follow him.
this illness . . . death: Its result was death, but the illness and death were intended in order that Christ's messiahship would be finally and convincingly proved by means of it.
already . . . days: Lazarius is truly dead, but his illness and death were intended in order that Christ's messiahship would be finally and convincingly proved by means of it. Lazarus must have died the day the messengers came from Martha and Mary. Jesus stayed two days more, east of the Jordan; the return journey to Bethany took a full day and as burial took place on the day of death, Lazarus was already four days buried.
if you . . . here: Both sisters believed Christ could have cured their brother had he been present; they did not think he could do so from a distance. Nor did they think he could now raise him from the dead. Yet, Martha still shows her strong faith in Jesus' influence when she says: "Even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you," but this evidently did not include the possibility of his calling Lazarus from the tomb, as her objection to removing the stone later shows.
Your brother . . . again: Martha believed in the future resurrection of the dead as did many, but not all, of her contemporaries, and she understands Jesus' words to refer to this general resurrection.
I am . . . life: Jesus confirms this belief and adds that it is he himself who is the cause of the resurrection and the eternal life which will follow it.
whoever . . . never die: All who believe in Christ and live according to that faith will live forever. While they must pass through the gates of physical death---the lot of all mankind---they only pass into eternal life.
Christ . . . God: Martha answers that she believes he is the Messiah so long expected. "Son of God" in opposition to "the Christ," that is, the Messiah, is not used in its strict sense.
deeply . . . troubled: Christ in his human nature suffered anguish and pain to a greater degree than any mere human being. His agony in the garden as his passion approached is evidence of this (see Heb. 5:7). He knew that this present miracle was to precipitate his passion and death, as the sequel shows.
Take . . . stone: Martha, thinking he wanted to see his dead friend, objected as corruption would already have set in.
You . . . God: Jesus tells her that had she believed, trusted in him she would see a miracle---"the glory of God." God would glorify himself and his Son.
crowd . . . sent one: He had thanked his Father aloud for having heard his request---to raise Lazarus. He was the Son of God and his, and the Father's, power were one, but the people could not grasp the truth of his divinity yet---what he wants is that they will accept him as the promised Messiah.
Lazarus, come out: The miracle takes place, the dead man rose and:
many of the Jews: Not all of them believed his claim that he was the Messiah whom God had sent, notwithstanding this extraordinary miracle.

APPLICATION: On hearing this story of the resurrection of Lazarus, the question which will arise in the minds of most people is this: why did Jesus allow his best and most faithful friends to suffer anguish for four days? He could have cured Lazarus of his illness the moment he heard of it. Yet he delayed and allowed the sisters to suffer the death of their beloved brother. We have already given the answer above. He wanted to make this, his last recorded miracle, a convincing proof of his claim to be what he was---the Messiah, sent by God to give a new life, an eternal life, to mankind. He also wanted to give his enemies a great impulse and motive to carry out his condemnation and crucifixion, which was the debt he "the suffering servant" of God, was to pay for the sins of mankind.

That his closest friends had to suffer for a while, in order to cooperate with him in his plans was therefore an unavoidable necessity. Is there not here an answer to the questionings of divine providence which we hear so often from otherwise devout followers of Christ? Drowned in their own personal sorrow and grief they cannot see that this very sorrow and grief is part of Christ's plan for the salvation of men. And the fact that they are loyal, true friends of Christ is the very reason they are chosen to carry this particularly heavy cross. Less faithful friends would not help him, so in his mercy he does not put that extra load on their unwilling shoulders.

Martha and Mary had to live through four sad days, while their friend seemed to forget them. But how great was the reward for their sufferings, when their beloved brother returned to the family circle---a brother they thought they had lost forever! We can well imagine the rejoicing that took place in that home in Bethany (not only that night but for years to follow).

We all have our sorrows and separations from our loved ones. But as in the case of the Bethany family, they are temporary separations. Our dear ones who are taken from us are not lost to us---they are perhaps closer to us and more helpful to us than they ever could have been in this life. And our faith convinces us that we will be reunited soon with them. Christ by his death, has conquered death. He has won eternal life for all men. His resurrection was the prelude ("the first-fruits," as St. Paul calls it) to the resurrection of all mankind---a resurrection to an eternal life of happiness where families, friends and neighbors will rejoice together in the presence of God for all eternity. The years of sorrow we have to endure here below will look small and trifling indeed when viewed from eternity.

But---and this is a capital but---though Christ has won a new, eternal life of adopted sonship with God for all men, each man must do his part to earn that sonship, to merit the eternal happiness which Christ came to win for us. "God created us without our consent," says St. Augustine, "but he cannot save us without our cooperation." We must live our lives then as Christ has taught us.

For every thought we give to death, and we are reminded of it hourly and daily, let us think three times on what will follow after it. If we do, we will never die unprepared. We will have made sure of a happy eternity.-a135

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