Raising Lazarus: God without Limits

(Fifth Sunday of Lent-Year A; This homily was given on March 29, 2020 at a private Mass in Rome, Italy, in accord with the regulations of the Republic of Italy and the Vicariate of Rome; The original text in Italian is included; See Ezekiel 37:12-14 and John 11: 1-45)

There is a beautiful, peaceful field near my father’s house back in the United States.  It is covered with green grass and slightly rolling hills.  When I was in my early twenties I would drive to that place and spend hours alone there every week.  I would go there to pray, to think, read the Bible, and drink lots of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee!  Each week, it seemed, I would learn more and more about the infinite love of God.  In the silence of that place I came to discover, ever more intimately, His invitation to a deeper interior life.  In many ways, my vocation to the priesthood was born in that place, or at least it was nurtured there as I considered the decision to enter the seminary.  

There is one important thing about that field, however, that is worth mentioning.  It is not, strictly  speaking, a field.  It is a cemetery!  It was a fairly new cemetery when I would visit, and so there were not many grave sites yet.  It consisted of mainly open fields in those days, and many people would go there to walk or exercise, or just enjoy the silence.  When I went there I would pray for the souls of the deceased, and the sacredness of that place never let me forget that I was in the presence of God.  It was also a healthy reminder that this life—although infinitely blessed because of the unfathomable love of God—is finite. 

One day when I was there reading from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, I came across the passage we listened to today in the first reading:

O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them, and bring you back to the land of Israel.

—Ezekiel 37:12

I had the most overwhelming sense of peace and hope in that moment, not only for myself but for all those who were at rest in that cemetery and all those who, as we pray in the liturgy, “have gone before us with the sign of faith and rest in the sleep of peace.”  Life here is limited, but the God who created us is not.  He will most certainly have the final word.

In the Gospel for this weekend we listen to the raising of Lazarus.  It is a Gospel that reveals all too clearly the limits of life here on earth.  Lazarus is blessed to have Jesus, the eternal Son of God, as one of his best friends.   Yet, this is not enough to keep him from getting sick, and from experiencing an illness that will eventually take his life.  Martha, his sister, has a strong faith and love for Jesus.  But still, she seems to have been tested beyond her limits when she meets our Lord and exclaims:

Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

—John 11:21

If you had been here . . . 

In other words: We sent word to you almost a week ago.  Where were you?  Why did you allow this to happen?  

She will not be the last one to ask Jesus this question in a time of sorrow and loss.  In fact, her sister, Mary, who not so long ago sat attentively at the feet of the Master, will address Jesus in the very same words: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:32).  

This passage makes us all too aware of our limitations.  But nothing reveals the truth like the obvious.  When Jesus orders the stone blocking the tomb to be removed, Martha declares: “Lord, by now there will be a stench: he has been dead for four days” (John 11:39).  Death is the ultimate limit, and everyone at the tomb knows it.  

And so that is precisely where Jesus addresses that ultimate limit, and surpasses it:

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.”

—John 11:43-44

We are only two short weeks away from the Solemnity of Easter, and the celebration of the resurrection.  Normally it is a celebration in which we leave behind the limits we have placed upon ourselves during the Lenten Season and begin to enter into the joy of the risen Lord.  This year, though, many aspects of our celebration will be different.  There will be no public celebration of the Sacred Triduum at the Vatican, or in many places throughout the world, this year.  Traditional dinners with a houseful of relatives and friends will not take place like in years past.  Our lives have become so very limited in these past few months.

But nothing reveals the truth like the obvious.  Tens of thousands of people have died since the COVID-19 crisis began.  Entire regions of the country we are living in have been devastated: Bergamo, Brescia, Milan.  Hundreds of thousands of people throughput the world are suffering from this illness.  Our very way of life has changed.  The fact that we are limited could not be any more real.  But perhaps we could not be any more prepared for the truth of the Gospel, that the God who created us is not limited in any way, and that He is here with us.

The exchange between Martha and Jesus is especially important for us as we experience all kinds of limits in our lives.  He challenges her to have faith.  “Your brother will rise” (John 11:23).  This is not the first time Martha has heard about the resurrection.  Remember, she is a close friend of Jesus.  She is well aware of the teaching of which He speaks.  It is just that, so overwhelmed with grief, she can do nothing more than repeat back to Jesus what she has be taught: “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day” (John 11:24).  

In response, Jesus immediately reveals the most amazing reality that Martha, or any one of us, could ever know.  He declares:

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.

—John 11:25-26

The resurrection is not a teaching, not a statement of faith that we memorize and hold onto when we struggle with life’s end.  The resurrection is a person, Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God.  “I am the resurrection,” he proclaims to Martha.  “I am the resurrection, and the life.”

This is the reality that breaks all barriers, that has the power to enter into the darkest human reality and transform it from the inside out.  Our faith is not founded on an idea or a set of principles, but on a person who has already come into this world to change the way we see life and to challenge us to embrace with tenacity the virtue of hope when the road is dark. 

As we prepare to celebrate the Solemnity of the Resurrection in a few short weeks, may we come to know Jesus Christ ever more intimately, “the resurrection and the life,” and come to realize more completely that He surpasses every possible limit, and is constantly at work in the world we live in.  Our mission as Christians, indeed our privilege and our vocation, is to participate fully in that saving work.

Testo originale:

C'è un bellissimo e tranquillo campo vicino alla casa di mio padre negli Stati Uniti.   Quando avevo vent'anni andavo in quel posto e ci passavo ore da solo ogni settimana.  Ci andavo per pregare, per pensare, per leggere la Bibbia.  Nel silenzio di quel luogo, sono venuto a scoprire, sempre più intimamente, il Suo invito a una vita interiore più profonda.  Infatti, la mia vocazione al sacerdozio è nata in quel luogo, o almeno vi si è nutrita mentre consideravo la decisione di entrare in seminario.   

Ma, c’è una cosa importante su questo campo.  Non è, in senso stretto, un campo.  È un cimitero!  Un posto per le tombe!  Era un cimitero abbastanza nuovo quando ci andavo a visitare, e quindi non c'erano ancora molte tombe.  A quei tempi i campi erano per lo più aperti, e molte persone vi andavano a passeggiare o a fare esercizio fisico, o semplicemente a godersi il silenzio.  Quando ci andavo, pregavo per le anime dei defunti, e la sacralità di quel luogo non mi faceva mai dimenticare di essere alla presenza di Dio.  È stato anche un sano promemoria del fatto che questa vita, sebbene infinitamente benedetta a causa dell'insondabile amore di Dio, è finita.

Un giorno, mentre leggevo il Libro del Profeta Ezechiele, ho incontrato il brano che abbiamo ascoltato oggi nella prima lettura:

Ecco, io apro i vostri sepolcri, vi faccio uscire dalle vostre tombe, o popolo mio, e vi riconducono nella terra d'Israele.

-Ezechiele 37:12

Ovviamente, è una profezia della risurrezione.  In quel momento ho avuto un senso di pace e di speranza, non solo per me, ma per tutti coloro che erano a riposo in quel cimitero.  La nostra vita qui è limitata, ma il Dio che ci ha creato non è limitato, e avrà l'ultima parola.

Nel Vangelo di questo fine settimana ascoltiamo la risurrezione di Lazzaro.  È un Vangelo che rivela chiaramente i limiti della vita qui sulla terra.  

Lazzaro è benedetto ad avere Gesù, l'eterno Figlio di Dio, come uno dei suoi migliori amici.   Ma questo non basta a impedirgli di ammalarsi e di sperimentare una malattia che alla fine gli toglierà la vita.  

Anche Marta, sua sorella, ha una forte fede e un forte amore per Gesù.  Ma nonostante ciò, la morte di Lazzaro era troppo.  Lei dice a Gesù:

Signore, se tu fossi stato qui, mio fratello non sarebbe morto.

-Giovanni 11:21

Se tu fossi stato qui . . . 

In altre parole: Ti abbiamo mandato un messaggio quasi una settimana fa.  Dove sei stato?  Perché hai permesso tutto questo?  

La fede di Marta è limitata.  La morte, infatti,  è il limite ultimo, e tutti al sepolcro lo sanno.  

Ed è proprio lì, in quello posto, che Gesù si rivolge a quel limite, e lo supera:

Gridò a gran voce: "Lazzaro, vieni fuori!".  Il morto uscì, i piedi e le mani legati con bende, e il viso avvolto da un sudario.  Gesù disse loro: "Liberàtelo e lasciàtelo andare".

-Giovanni 11:43-44

Mancano solo due settimane alla solennità della Pasqua e alla celebrazione della risurrezione.  Normalmente è una celebrazione in cui ci lasciamo i limiti che ci siamo posti durante il periodo quaresimale e cominciamo ad entrare nella gioia del Signore risorto.  Ma, quest’anno, molti aspetti della nostra celebrazione saranno diversi.  Quest'anno non ci sarà una celebrazione pubblica del Sacro Triduo in Vaticano o in molti luoghi del mondo.  La nostra vita è diventata così limitata in questi ultimi mesi.

Peggio ancora, decine di migliaia di persone sono morte dall'inizio della crisi della COVID-19.  Intere regioni qui in Italia sono state devastate: Bergamo, Brescia, Milano.  Il nostro stesso stile di vita è cambiato.  Il fatto che siamo limitati non potrebbe essere più reale.  Ma forse perché questa prova siamo più preparati per la verità nel Vangelo, che il Dio che ci ha creato non è in alcun modo limitato, e che Lui è sempre qui con noi.

Gesù dice:

Io sono la risurrezione e la vita; chi crede in me, anche se muore, vivrà; chiunque vive e crede in me non morirà in eterno.

-Giovanni 11:25-26

La risurrezione non è un insegnamento, non è una dichiarazione di fede che memorizziamo.  La risurrezione è una persona, Gesù Cristo, l'eterno Figlio di Dio.  "Io sono la risurrezione", proclama a Marta.  "Io sono la risurrezione e la vita".

Questa è la realtà che supera ogni limite, che ha il potere di entrare nella più oscura realtà umana e di trasformarla dall'interno verso l'esterno.  La nostra fede non si fonda su un'idea o alcuni principi, ma su una persona che è già venuta in questo mondo per portarci attraverso ogni difficoltà e per cambiare tutto ciò che abbiamo mai conosciuto della vita.

Mentre ci prepariamo a celebrare la solennità della risurrezione tra poche settimane, possiamo conoscere Gesù Cristo sempre più intimamente, "la risurrezione e la vita", e renderci conto che Egli supera ogni limite, ed è costantemente all'opera nel mondo in cui viviamo. La nostra missione di cristiani, anzi il nostro privilegio e la nostra vocazione, è di partecipare pienamente a quest'opera di salvezza

Learning to Please the Lord

(Fourth Sunday of Lent-Year A; This homily was given on March 22, 2020 in Rome, Italy; See John 9: 1-41)

This has definitely been a period of learning.  Here in Italy, and certainly everywhere else in the world, we have had to learn new ways of living with the crisis of COVID-19.  In fact, even the seminarians here in Rome and students at the major universities are learning new ways of, well, learning.  Instead of listening to lectures in a classroom, they are following their professors online behind a computer screen.  The same is happening in grammar schools and high schools, here and in the U.S., and across the world. 

Priests and religious are necessarily learning new ways of ministering in these challenging times.  Although many priests have already become tech-savvy by putting their Masses and homilies online for the sick and homebound, now this is perhaps the only way for priests to communicate the saving message of Christ to their flock.  Parishes everywhere in the world are becoming “homebound” as states and regions implement radical measures to stave off the spread of this devastating illness.

We are all learning to live in a new way, staying more and more at home and hopefully striving to understand what our Lord is asking of us in these strange days.  That message of learning and growth is central to the Christian life.  We also see it clearly in the readings for this weekend.  St. Paul, writing to the Church at Ephesus, instructs them, “Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:10).  

St. Paul’s audience has already experienced interior conversion and has been introduced into the life of Jesus Christ.  He writes to them, saying “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8).  Still, the fullness of the Christian life is not something that happens automatically.  They will have to learn about the life, passion and death of Christ; they will come to discover the life of virtue and the need to live daily by God’s grace and mercy.  They will gradually, and certainly joyfully, “learn what is pleasing to the Lord”.  

Liturgically in the life of the Church, catechumens are learning many things about the Christian life.  They are being instructed in the faith as they prepare to be received into the Church this Easter.  Perhaps many of them will have to learn a different way of celebrating that mystery in these coming days.  Maybe many of them will not be able to receive the Sacraments of Initiation in the presence of an entire congregation and their family as they had anticipated, but perhaps they will have to experience that moment at some time later.  This is definitely a new period of learning for us all.

In the Gospel this weekend we hear of the man born blind who is healed by Christ.  Once in utter darkness, now he is able to see the light and everyone in it.  It is a glorious moment of healing and grace for that man.  Still, he does not completely know everything that he needs to know, or would like to know, about living in the light.  He does not know everything that he needs to know about life in Jesus Christ.  He will come to discover these things gradually; he will learn them.

When the people come to discover that the blind man has been healed, they are astounded and ask him how he received his sight.  He responds, “The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’  So I went.” (John 9:11).  The man called Jesus . . . He is correct, of course.  Jesus is a man.  Still, there is so much more that he will come to know about this Jesus of Nazareth.

The next time the man born blind is questioned, the inquiry happens before the Pharisees.  They ask him the same question, how he was healed.  The man responds in the same way, but by now he has been able to learn a little more about “the man called Jesus.”  When the Pharisees ask, “What do you have to say about him,” the man replies, “He is a prophet” (John 9:17).  OK, now we are getting warmer!  Again, what the man has said is true, Jesus is a prophet.  He has come, in fact, to fulfill the law and the prophets.  But there is still much more left to learn.  It is only when the man comes back, face to face with Jesus, that the eyes of his heart are completely opened.

Jesus hears that the Pharisees have thrown the man out of the synagogue, and so our Lord seeks him out.  The Gospel relates that exchange between the Master and His pupil:

[Jesus] found him and said, 

“Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 

He answered and said, 

“Who is he sir, that I may believe in him?”

Jesus said to him, 

“You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.”

He said, 

“I do believe, Lord,” and he worshiped him.

—John 9:35-38

In the space of that account in the Gospel this man has not only received his sight, not only has he moved from darkness to light, but he has also come to a living faith in Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God.  He places his belief in the Lord, and he worships Him. 

How are we growing in our faith this Lent, and how are we able to respond to St. Paul’s exhortation, “Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:10)?

Firstly, it is hardly possible to please someone if you do not know them!  It is also really difficult to know someone unless you talk with them.  A lot.  We started Lent focusing on prayer, fasting and almsgiving.  Today we can check back on those three spiritual practices and especially our daily conversation with the Lord.   We begin to please the Lord by sincere and heartfelt prayer.  Are we speaking to Him often about the coronavirus?  About the people that we love and are close to, and the concerns that they are facing?  About the people that are very far away, people we perhaps do not even know, but who are desperately in need our prayers in this crisis?  This is pleasing to God.  So is listening well to Him, trying to understand what He is saying to us and how He would like us to live our Christian faith.  We please the Lord by talking with Him a lot in prayer.

Secondly, we can learn what is pleasing to the Lord in the midst of the ordinary struggles and trials that we face each day.  There is a remarkable passage in the Letter to the Hebrews describing the passion of our Lord.  It says, “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (Hebrews 5:8-9).  It is not the case that Jesus was ever disobedient, and had to be taught a lesson.  Obviously, He was always obedient and He lovingly attended the will of the Father.  It is just that, in those moments of suffering, He was able to manifest and express that obedience and love in a particular and efficacious way.  So it is with each of us.  In the moments of difficulty that we face each day, we learn obedience, we learn to lovingly attend to the will of God.  These days it may seem very difficult to navigate the many changes in our lives, the restrictions we have received, the challenges that we are facing.  There are many opportunities for us to learn the obedience of love that grace often ushers into our lives in precisely such moments.  

Finally, we can learn what is pleasing to the Lord through what the theologian Robert Jenson indicates as "telling the story of salvation."  According to Jenson, the role of the Christian is to tell the story of salvation, firstly to God, and then to the world around us.  

At first this seems rather strange.  Why would we tell the story of salvation to God?  It would seem that He is already rather familiar with that story!  But if we look all throughout the Sacred Scriptures, the people of God are constantly telling the story about how God saved them, how He rescued them from peril, and they praise Him for that marvelous salvation.  It is called, says Jenson, worship.  We worship God when we recall all the amazing things He has done for us, and give Him thanks and praise.  In the Gospel, the man born blind finally came to understand who Jesus was.  He expressed his faith in the Lord, “and he worshiped him.”  We are called to do the same.

Once we have been strengthened in our faith and worshiped God, then we move on to tell the story of salvation to those around us.  This is evangelization.  In these difficult days in which so many people are worried and concerned about the future and about all that is happening around us, we do well as Christians to remember that God is faithful; that He has always been faithful; that He always will be faithful.  When we tell the story of God’s saving love and His care for our lives, we give the people around us hope that we are not alone and that we will always be cared for by God, especially in dark and difficult times like the one we are experiencing.  

As we strive “to learn what is pleasing to the Lord,” there are many things that God can teach us.  By far, three of the greatest of these are faith, hope and love.  May we discover, like the man in our Gospel this weekend, how to have a living faith that worships and obeys God.  We also place our hope and our trust in Him and in the promise that He is always with us, especially as we face the crisis of the coronavirus.  We ask, above all, for the grace to love Him, and to see that same love made present in our lives and in the way we live. 

Thirsting for God

(Third Sunday of Lent-Year A; This homily was given on March 15, 2020 in Rome, Italy; See John 4: 5-42)

There is a powerful Country song by the artist, Kathy Mattea, named “Knee Deep in a River.”   Like many Country songs it is tragic and beautiful at the same time, because it describes life as we often find it.  The song is about the abundance of relationships and possibilities for fulfillment, and the truth that we very often fail to make those essential connections.  Instead of being fulfilled by what is already in our lives, we seek something else and are left wanting.  The song begins:

Friends I could count on, I could count on one hand

With a leftover finger or two

I took ‘em for granted, let ‘em all slip away

Now where they are I wish I knew

They roll by just like water

And I guess we never learn

Go through life parched and empty

Standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst

In our Gospel this weekend we hear that familiar and moving story of the woman at the well.  In many ways she is a woman standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst.  She comes to the well to draw water and, unknowingly, finds herself standing before the Messiah.  He engages her in a profoundly personal conversation and declares to her even the most intimate details of her life.  When he invites her to go and call her husband, the woman replies, “I do not have a husband.”  Jesus responds, “You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’  For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.  What you have said is true” (John 4:17-18).  In all of those relationships she has not been able to find the fulfillment and the peace that she is seeking.  She is standing knee deep in a river, and dying of thirst.

What is more, we learn that she has come to the well at noon time.  No one comes to draw water at noon in that part of the world!  Women in Palestine in the time of Christ came to draw water in the morning, or perhaps late afternoon, when it was cooler.  They would likely come in numbers because it was safer.  But this woman would not have felt either welcome or comfortable among that number.  She comes to the well at noon because she is alone, isolated from the relationships and the community to which she belongs.

Yet in the midst of her thirst, and precisely in the place of greatest vulnerability, she finds the source of living water that is Christ Himself.  It is an amazing and hope-filled story of encounter and transformation.  I would suggest that it is especially compelling for us in at least two specific ways.  

Firstly, it is compelling because we see this woman connected not only to the source of living water that is Christ; we also see her reconnected to all of the relationships that were already present in her life.  By the end of the Gospel, we hear that she has returned to the town and become an ambassador for Jesus Christ.  She tells them all that Jesus has said to her, asking “Could he possibly be the Christ?” (John 4:29).  Not only does she return with confidence and announce the Messiah to them with boldness; importantly, they truly listen to her.  They take this woman very seriously, and are inwardly moved by what she has told them.  

Secondly, this story is compelling because we have all been there, we have all been that thirsty.  We all know what it is like to have such an abundance of possibilities for being fulfilled, so many relationships and graces that we experience on so many different levels, and still find ourselves unhappy and thirsty for the love and contentment that God alone can provide.  

There is a wonderful book called, The Little Prince, which has been translated into several hundred languages and has delighted children and adults for decades.  It is tale about an aviator whose plane breaks down in the desert.  There in that place he meets the Little Prince, who is visiting Earth from his own small planet.  They become friends and begin to go on adventures together.   At one point their source of water runs out and they become quite thirsty.  Suddenly, in the middle of the desert, they discover a well!  The aviator draws some water for the Prince and is struck by the simplicity and serenity with which his little friend consumes it.  He thinks to himself that seeing the Prince enjoying that water is like a holiday; it gave the aviator pleasure just to watch how content that Little Prince was.  Suddenly his little friend turns to him and says:

“The men where you live raise five thousand roses in the same garden—and they do not find in it what they are looking for . . . And yet what they are looking for could be found in one single rose, or in a little water.”  

The aviator concedes, perhaps from personal experience, that this is true; we are often left unsatisfied, despite the great abundance of what we have been given.  The prince then declares that they eyes are blind, and “one has to look with the heart.”

We are called to seek Christ, the living water, who alone can satisfy us.  God invites us to open our hearts and our souls, and to drink deeply from Christ, the source of living water.  Here in the Eucharist we arrive at the well, at the place where Christ fulfills our deepest desires.  But, like the woman at the well, He also longs to reconnect us to others and to make us more aware of the many possibilities for being in communion with the people that are already a part of our lives.  Will we cooperate with that holy longing?

The final verse of that Kathy Mattea song is as tragic and poignant as the beginning:

So the sidewalk is crowded, the city goes by,

And I rush through another day

And a world full of strangers turn their eyes to me,

But I just look the other way

They roll by just like water

And I guess we never learn

Go through life parched and empty

Standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst

Drinking deeply here at this well, strengthened in the body and blood of Christ, we ask for the grace not to turn the other way, but to help others to find that same source of living water that is Christ.  In particular in these days, as the people we encounter turn to us, perhaps it is only the eyes that we will see.  In the midst of the current pandemic of the coronavirus COVID-19, peoples faces are often partially covered with a protective mask and their eyes alone are visible.  How essential that we do not look the other way, but instead engage them and help them to have hope and faith in the midst of this crisis.  May the God who met the woman at the well meet each of us this week, quenching our thirst for true peace and fulfillment and granting our deep desire for healing and new life.