Save as PDFIn the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!
We’ve just heard the Evangel of Saint John telling us a very important event from the life of the Lord God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, namely, the rising Lazarus from the dead. This event in the Church is so important, that commemoration of it takes place on the eve of the Entrance of the Lord into Jerusalem or the Palm Sunday, as people call it, then comes the commemoration of His great and saving Passion, death and Resurrection. In fact the church even proclaims that Lazarus rising from the dead confirms the Resurrection of the Lord. The troparion of the feast sings, «Thou didst raise Lazarus from the dead, O Christ-God, making certain the universal resurrection, before Thy Passion».
As we heard in the Evangel, Mary and Martha told Jesus that His friend Lazarus was deadly sick. His two sisters came to Jesus and asked Him to come and heal their brother Lazarus. Jesus was close to this family and so, His slowness in fulfilling their wish seemed strange for His disciples. When at last Jesus came to Bethany to Lazarus who had been dead for four days already, his sisters seemed offended. After Jesus greeting Martha says, “If You had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died”. Such accusation can sometimes come out from our mouth, sinners, We are inclined to expect from the Lord all we want, but the main thing is that we want to be given, what we ask for at once. We are naive to think that all we ask for, only because we ask for it, will be given by our merciful Lord Jesus Christ, Martha and Mary considered that they were friends of Jesus. We also consider ourselves, in our own way, to be “friends” of the Lord or, at least, his disciples. We know that we will be taken for His disciples if “there is love among us”. And being His friends and disciples, we hope Jesus will fulfill any our wish as Martha and Mary thought in today’s Evangel reading.
We must realize like Martha and Mary, who simply wanted healing for their brother, that Jesus always gives more than a believer expects. And this happened with Lazarus, the same happens with us. We ask for some-thing, expect this to be given to us as we wish, and than we may be offended when it won’t be fulfilled. Only later we realize that the Lord, because of His love and mercy to all humankind, gives us something better, something more sensible for our spiritual life, something greater than our limited mind could imagine at first. We are simply inclined to ask for healing, but the Lord gives us resurrection!
This Evangel reading clearly shows two natures in Christ – both God and a Man. Seeing his dead friend in the coffin, God-man, because of His love, weeps for all human-kind. The same God-man cries out then, “Lazarus, come forth”, and rises him from the dead. On the example of Lazarus rising from the dead we can see human nature of our Lord Jesus Christ. We see how He loved Lazarus, how he weeping with Mary and those with her, how he is worried and deeply touched. God-man experienced all this to His friends. The same feelings can also be transferred on divine principles when we see that resurrected Lord loves all and each of us, and how he worries and weeps for us, sinners. But it’s important that these human feelings of God-man Jesus Christ are balanced by the fact that He is the same God-man who has a power over all living and dead things and who surpassed all laws of nature and rose His friend Lazarus from the dead. The Omniscient God, in humility of mind “asks where they have laid Lazarus”. This seeming contradiction will last in the course of all Lord suffering. This truth is reflected in what we hear today – the same God-man weeps over His friend Lazarus, rises Him from dead. Miraculous is our God, brothers and sisters, miraculous indeed!
Let this celebration of Lazarus risen from the dead gives us hope. Let it strengthen us before Solemn Entrance of the Lord into Jerusalem, His almost simultaneous betrayal, persecution and death. We will remember today’s feast in the course of the Passion week knowing, that even during the deep-east and greatest sorrow, Christ is Life. And the most important thing is that He gives His life for all and each of us. Today’s Evangel tells us the eternal truth which Jesus clearly confirmed saying, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die” (John 11, 25-26). Let’s always remember these words to have life in Christ, and to have it in abundance. Amen.