Day 36: And Jesus Wept

The Mass is a re-presentation of salvation history.  The story of redemption encapsulated for our participation in it.

In the Eucharist we witness the Incarnation: Christ born again in a piece of bread.  He offers Himself - the Word of God - in Scripture and in the sacred meal we share.  He dies again when we receive Him - descends into the bowels of our own sinfulness, dies like the seed that must give its life so that we may live.  And He rises again in us, when we, now part of His Body, go forth to be His hands and feet and eyes and ears in the world.

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Today's readings are astonishing.  The Gospel contains that famous verse: And Jesus wept.  Et lacrimatus est Iesus, says the Vulgate.  The passive form in the Latin emphasizing the helplessness of Jesus in the face of His sorrow.  Jesus was made to have wept.  

Yet Jesus was not helpless in the face of this despair.  Why should Jesus weep?  He knew that He would raise Lazarus from the dead.  He says to His Apostles: This illness is not to end in death.  Yet Lazarus does die.  The point is that, though the illness will not end in death, the illness must bring Lazarus through death: Lazarus must die before He can be raised.  And this death is still something that causes Christ sorrow.  Christ does not offer the grieving sisters any blithe platitudes.  Christ is perturbed at their grief.  Christ weeps with them.

The faith and loyalty of Martha and Mary are put here to an awful test.  Already they have been tempted, perhaps, to anger that Jesus did not do more to save their brother.  They bring Him their reproach: if you had been here, our brother would not have died.  Yet they also never lose faith in Him.  Despite His apparent neglect of them, they still offer Him their love and faith.  Their interaction with Jesus is a model for us.  God welcomes us to share our sorrows with Him, to ask our questions.  Why did this have to happen?  Where were you, God, in the midst of this tragedy?  But the sisters invite us to share their faith: they trust that, somehow, the will of God will take place.  They do not ask Jesus to raise their brother: they simply say, Whatever you ask of God, God will give You.  They put their sorrows and their questions and their fears into Christ's hands, and entrust their fates to Him.

Jesus' prayer at Lazarus' tomb is a model for us as well.  I thank You for hearing Me.  I know You always hear Me.  Can we make this prayer our own?  Can we know that God hears us, even when He seems to be silent?

The faith of the disciples, too, plays a role in this tale.  The story is bracketed by the disciples' fear for Jesus' life: if He goes to Bethany, so near to Jerusalem, He risks being stoned to death.  They try to talk themselves and Jesus out of going to Bethany.  Fear of the death makes them afraid to seek God's glory.  But Thomas utters the words: Let us also go to die with him.  Thomas' words follow Jesus' Let us go to him, meaning Lazarus.  Thomas demonstrates his willingness to follow Jesus on His life-giving mission, even if it means his own death.  When Jesus asks us to go sacrifice our lives for the Lazaruses of this world, can we say with Thomas: Let us also go?

Make Jesus' tears our own: weep at the injustice of death, weep with compassion for those who mourn.  Make the words of Martha and Mary our own: If you had been here. . . but whatever you ask of God, God will give you.  Make the words of Jesus our own: I thank You for hearing Me.  I know You always hear Me.  Make the words of Thomas our own: Let us also go to die with You.  Know that God hears our sorrow and our pain, and follow Jesus into the depths of that sorrow, trusting that He will bring out of it life and joy.