Reflection on the Readings at Mass for the Fifth Sunday of Lent – Year A. The Liturgical Sense of the Scriptures Podcast, by Catholic Author and Theologian David L. Gray.
The Liturgy Empowers and Equips us to Bring the Dead to Life
Our God is a God of life. For He gave us life in the beginning, when He blew His breath in to the nostrils of man, and by that, man became a living soul, meaning that before God gave him life, man was dead. Then the Son of God breathed on the Apostles, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained,” meaning that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Apostles, and their successors have the authority to free us from death and sin and bring us back to life and freedom in Christ. Even when the Apostle Peter calls the sacred Scriptures “God-breathed,” in Second Timothy 3:15, he affirms that there is true life and freedom whenever we receive the life of the Holy Spirit, including in the written word of God, which He inspired. God’s breath is life, which is why the liturgy teaches us what to speak so that our words in the Spirit might also give life in the world.
For the Fifth Sunday of Lent – Year A, we hear a portion of the first of two promises that God communicated to the Prophet Ezekiel about giving life again to the twelve tribes of Israel. Today’s reading from Ezekiel 37:12-14 is prefaced with the Lord giving the Prophet a vision where he was placed in a valley full of dry bones. There, the Lord gives Ezekiel; two prophecies to proclaim to the dry bones about how the Lord will bring these bones back to life through His breath and Spirit, and the Prophet speaks the words given to him to the dry bones – “the whole house of Israel.” Then the Lord gives Ezekiel a final prophetic message to speak in this vision, saying, “Therefore, prophesy and say to them: Thus says the Lord GOD: Look! I am going to open your graves; I will make you come up out of your graves, my people, and bring you back to the land of Israel. You shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and make you come up out of them, my people! I will put my Spirit in you that you may come to life, and I will settle you in your land. Then you shall know that I am the LORD. I have spoken; I will do it—oracle of the LORD.”
Then in today’s Second Reading from Romans 8:8-11, we hear a part of the Apostle Paul’s words of encouragement to the Church in Rome about how they are called to live life in the Spirit, for which he declares about himself, “. . . the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.” For Paul, there is a war within us; our mind can be taken by unchaste emotions and passions, which entices the flesh to pursue those things which pleasure it, and those pleasures always lead to death. The higher and true calling for the Christian, then, is to live their life not according to the desires and dictates of the flesh but according to the desires and freedom of the Holy Spirit because, “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.” What a wonderful message for us to be reminded of as we approach the anniversary of our Baptisms when we first received the gift of the Holy Spirit in us.
From the Gospel of John 11:1-45, the account of Christ Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, the final point is being made in today’s selection of readings about how the breath of God gives us life. For Lazarus was truly dead, and had been dead for four whole days before his friend Jesus and the disciples arrived in Bethany. There was nothing untypical about the death of Lazarus. Apparently, he had fallen ill and after he died, his relatives prepared his body for burial, which meant that his body was washed and then anointed with expensive perfumes like nard, aloes, and myrrh. Lazarus body would have then been wrapped in a shroud, his hands and feet tied with strips of cloth, and his face covered with a special cloth. Then for the next three to seven days, family and friends would visit the family and say their goodbyes. There was also a Jewish belief that the soul remained with, but unattached to, the body for a period of three to seven days after death. Therefore, it was during this period of visitation and mourning when Jesus arrived and “found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.” After Jesus had come to the cave where Lazarus was buried, they pushed away the stone from the entrance, and He made it a point to give His Father the glory for the miracle that the crowd was about the witness, so that the crowd would know who sent Him, saying, “Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have 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 was 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 seen what he had done began to believe in him.” The breath of God gave Lazarus life again.
There is a significant amount of data to prove that Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were real/living persons in history. They were a noteworthy family who lived near Jerusalem in a city named Bethany, Martha is mentioned in the Talmud as being a wealthy and influential woman, and given that both Luke and John mention this family, it seems to have been important and intentional for the early Christian oral tradition to pass on their story. In fact, outside of the Passion Narrative, John’s most prolonged continuous narrative is this one about the raising of Lazarus. Aside from that historical fact, we might also consider Lazarus and the dry bones from Ezekiel as a metaphor for today’s world. I think we all encounter Lazarus every day; that is, people as living tombs walking around with a stone in front of them. We also know Martha and Mary, and you might be Martha or Mary; that is, a person who desires for Christ Jesus to visit with them, so that they might heal your family member or someone back to life who is dead in sin. At some point, we have all wanted that stone pushed away and for Jesus to perform a miracle on someone.
Indeed, the liturgy of Mass of teaching is that the same power that raised Lazarus from the dead now resides in us. Not only are we the Temple of the Holy Spirit; meaning that His breath is our breath, but we receive the very life of Christ Jesus in us at worthy reception of the Holy Eucharist; meaning His life comes to dwell in our body; the joint mission of the Second and Third Persons of the Holy Trinity now comes to work through us, but what shall we do with the power of God in us and what shall we make our mission with the mission of God dwelling in us? Those who were once dead in sin but now alive in Christ, how shall we proclaim and share that miracle? I got it; let us go eat some donuts and make merry with our fellow parishioners because that is exactly what the liturgy of Mass empowers and dismisses us to do. On the contrary, let us go push away that stone and speak words of life to these dry bones in the world. And if we do not believe that Holy Spirit, who spoke through the prophets, now speaks through us, then consider yourself Martha, to whom Jesus asked, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
This is just one way how the readings at Mass this Sunday connect to the liturgy and how the liturgy is forming us how to live our lives in the world. Be in the world what you have received through the liturgy.
