Jesus said: “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” (Jn 11:25)
For the Fifth Sunday of Lent praying the Missal of Paul VI, we are told once again the source of our total fulfillment in this, and in the next life: Jesus’ promise to us of life eternal. (In the Missal of John XXIII it is Passion Sunday.) When all seemed lost after four days of grave, the Lord gives his dead friend a supreme gift! This grace is not the permanent gift of life as Lazarus was destined to die again but this moment is a clear indication of who Jesus is when He uses the “I am” statement. The great question of all time is “who is Jesus?” Hence, this is the beginning of something that would change everything in the cosmos: resurrection of the body. In Angelus address today Pope Francis said, “As Jesus rose with His own body, but did not return to an earthly life, so we will rise with our bodies that will be transfigured into glorious bodies. He waits for us next to the Father, and the strength of the Holy Spirit, that resuscitated Him, will all raise those who are united to Him.”
The Lazarus event begs us to ask, what does this mean? What is my place in this event of resurrection?
Pope Francis concludes his Angelus remarks, and this is crucial:
The act of Jesus by which He raised Lazarus demonstrates the end to which the power of the Grace of God can arrive, and the end, therefore to which our conversion, our change can arrive. But listen well: there is no other limit to the divine mercy offered to all! There is no other limit to the divine mercy offered to all! Remember this phrase. And we can all say it together: “There is no other limit to the divine mercy offered to all!” Let us say it together: “There is no other limit to the divine mercy offered to all!” The Lord is always ready to take away the tombstone of our sins, which separate us from Him, the light of the living.
Saint Augustine tells us “Among all the miracles done by our Lord Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Lazarus holds a prime place in preaching. But if we consider attentively who did it, our duty is to rejoice rather than to wonder. A man was raised up by him who made humankind. He is the only one of the Father by whom, as you know, all things were made. And if all things were made by him, why is anyone amazed that one was raised by him when so many are daily brought into the world by his power? It is a greater deed to create men and women than to raise them again from the dead. Yet he decided both to create and to raise again; to create all, to resuscitate some.”
The friendship of Lord and the intimacy that this fact manifests for us is itself an indication of the love God has for each of us while showing us that outside forces are not exhausted.