OUR VISITING SEMINARIAN, BARNABAS, WRITES - 22nd March

“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,

and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

This Sunday we find ourselves between various significant points in the Church’s liturgical calendar; last week we celebrated Laetare Sunday, in which we rejoiced in anticipation of the coming celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection. This week, we celebrated the feast of St Patrick and the solemnity of St Joseph. Next Sunday, we will process with palm branches in our hands as we begin that solemn journey to Calvary with Our Lord in Holy Week. And this week, the Church gives us one of the most moving Gospel readings in the lectionary; the bringing of Lazarus back from the dead.

Something that has always struck me in this passage is the unapologetic way in which Jesus shows us His humanity, whilst also showing us so clearly His Divinity. In the midst of the death of His friend Lazarus, after Jesus testifies that He is the Resurrection and the life, we read one of the most awe-inspiring passages in scripture; that “Jesus wept”. Why are we told this? For what reason does Jesus let us in on this little secret, this brief glimpse into His emotions, His frailty, His pain? How are we to respond to Jesus’s tears? Perhaps one reason among many is so that we may be consoled. If Jesus had merely brought Lazarus back to life, of course, that would be enough. But how generous it is of Him to share with us not only His power, but also His sorrow. Jesus’s moving display of emotion emphasises to us a simple fact of life that He does not ask us to deny; death is tragic, and it is painful when we lose someone we love. And yet, God’s glory shines through all the same. Jesus weeps, yet He does not let death have the last word. Instead, He makes them open the tomb, not so that He can say a last farewell to his friend, but instead so that He can confidently call him out of the sleep of death. And so, as God’s children who await the glory of the Resurrection, we may also weep when faced with life’s tragedies, but we can do so not just with the comforting knowledge that Christ has wept with us, but also with the joyful hope that, at the end of all things, He will stand before the tombs of all His friends and say, this time without tears, ‘come forth’.