"I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE."

July 29^th, 2020: Luke 11:19-27. “Whoever believes in me will never die.”

          “If you had been here,” the grief-stricken Martha says to Jesus, “my brother would never have died.” She is expressing her confident faith, that Jesus has power even over our final and greatest enemy: death.  I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus tells Martha.  “Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” 

          To believe in Jesus Christ means to trust him. For those who trust Jesus physical death will not be the end. It will be the gateway to a new and higher life; a form of existence which is not passing away: where there is no more suffering, no more sickness, no more death; where “God will wipe away all tears from [our] eyes.” (Rev. 7:17 & 21:4). Before he went to his own physical death on Calvary, Jesus showed himself to his friends as the one with power even over death.

          Between the raising of Lazarus, however, and Jesus’ resurrection there was a crucial difference. Lazarus returned to his former life. Jesus went ahead to new life. Lazarus came forth from the tomb still wearing his burial clothes. He would need them again. Jesus left his burial garments behind (cf. John 20:6f). He needed them no more. He had passed beyond death to a new and higher life.

          Jesus uses the death and resurrection of his dear friend Lazarus to affirm a central truth of our Christian and Catholic faith. This truth was the seedbed in which my call to priesthood grew. Grief-stricken at age six by the death of my beloved 27-year-old mother, on the day after Christmas, after only a week’s illness, I was uplifted less than a year later by the realization that I would see my mother again, when the Lord called me home. This gave me belief in the reality of the unseen, spiritual world: the world of God, the angels, the saints, and of our beloved dead. At age twelve, the age at which Jesus told his parents in the Jerusalem Temple that he must be “about “my Father’s business,” I decided to be a priest. How can one be closer to God than by standing at the altar, obeying the Lord’s command to “do this in my memory”? From age twelve, and still today, the celebration of Mass has been, for me, the heart of priesthood, the greatest service in the world – something of which no man is worthy, not even the Pope – but to which our ever-loving heavenly Father calls weak sinners such as the one who is testifying to you, right now.