Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator
Today we read the last few verses of chapter eleven of St. John's Gospel. These verses complete the story of the raising of Lazarus. Through these verses, the evangelist completes part one of the Gospel, the Book of Signs. Beginning with chapter twelve, we will read the part two of the Gospel, the Book of Glory.
Only John connects the passion and death of Jesus to the signs that Jesus has worked. There have been seven signs all together: changing water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana, healing the royal official's son, healing the paralytic at Bethesda, feeding the multitude, walking on water, healing the man born blind, and the raising of Lazarus. Each of these signs is used to identify Jesus as the Incarnate Son of God by ascribing the roles that God plays in the lives of human beings to Jesus. These seven signs are interspersed with long discourses that interpret the signs for us.
The final sign, raising Lazarus from the dead, identifies Jesus as the Lord of Life, eternal life. By raising Lazarus, Jesus announces that immortality, the ultimate reality of God, rests in him and is the gift he bestows on believers. John tells us that the Pharisees realize that this sign will convince people that the claims he has made about himself are true. With great irony, John writes that they now decide to kill the Lord of Life, as if it were possible to kill God.
It was Pope John Paul II who identified the secular culture of our age as the Culture of Death, juxtaposing it against our faith, the Culture of Life. This Gospel text illustrates the fact that while we may have pushed the Culture of Death to new limits, it is nothing new. The struggle between life and death has been with us ever since Cain killed Abel. Holy Week, the most sacred week in our liturgical calendar, asks us to enter into the mystery of that struggle once again. Dying, he destroyed our death; rising, he restored our life.