From: John 11:19-27
The Raising of Lazarus (Continuation)
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Commentary:
1-45. This chapter deals with one of Jesus’ most outstanding miracles. The
Fourth Gospel, by including it, demonstrates Jesus’ power over death, which the
Synoptic Gospels showed by reporting the raising of the daughter of Jairus (Mat-
thew 9:25 and paragraph) and of the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:12).
The Evangelist first sets the scene (verses 1-16); then he gives Jesus’ conversa-
tion with Lazarus’ sisters (verses 17-37); finally, he reports the raising of Lazarus
four days after his death (verses 38-45). Bethany was only about three kilometers
(two miles) from Jerusalem (verse 18). On the days prior to His passion, Jesus
often visited this family, to which He was very attached. St. John records Jesus’
affection (verses 3, 5, 36) by describing His emotion and sorrow at the death of
His friend.
By raising Lazarus our Lord shows His divine power over death and thereby gives
proof of His divinity, in order to confirm His disciples’ faith and reveal Himself as
the Resurrection and the Life. Most Jews, but not the Sadducees, believed in the
resurrection of the body. Martha believed in it (cf. verse 24).
Apart from being a real, historical event, Lazarus’ return to life is a sign of our
future resurrection: we too will return to life. Christ, by His glorious resurrection
though He is the “first-born from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:20; Colossians 1:
18; Revelation 1:5), is also the cause and model of our resurrection. In this His
resurrection is different from that of Lazarus, for “Christ being raised from the
dead will never die again” (Romans 6:9), whereas Lazarus returned to earthly
life, later to die again.
21-22. According to St. Augustine, Martha’s request is a good example of confi-
dent prayer, a prayer of abandonment into the hands of God, who knows better
than we what we need. Therefore, “she did not say, But now I ask You to raise
my brother to life again. [...] All she said was, I know that You can do it; if you
will, do it; it is for you to judge whether to do it, not for me to presume” (”In Ioann.
Evang.”, 49, 13). The same can be said of Mary’s words, which St. John repeats
at verse 32.
24-26. Here we have one of those concise definitions Christ gives of Himself, and
which St. John faithfully passes on to us (cf. John 10:9; 14:6; 15:1): Jesus is the
Resurrection and the Life. He is the Resurrection because by His victory over
death He is the cause of the resurrection of all men. The miracle He works in
raising Lazarus is a sign of Christ’s power to give life to people. And so, by faith
in Jesus Christ, who arose first from among the dead, the Christian is sure that
he too will rise one day, like Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:23; Colossians 1;18).
Therefore, for the believer death is not the end; it is simply the step to eternal life,
a change of dwelling-place, as one of the Roman Missal’s Prefaces of Christian
Death puts it: “Lord, for your faithful people life is changed, not ended. When the
body of our earthly dwelling lies in death, we gain an everlasting dwelling place in
Heaven”.
By saying that He is Life, Jesus is referring not only to that life which begins be-
yond the grave, but also to the supernatural life which grace brings to the soul of
man when he is still a wayfarer on this earth.
“This life, which the Father has promised and offered to each man in Jesus
Christ, His eternal and only Son, who ‘when the time had fully come’ (Galatians
4:4), became incarnate and was born of the Virgin Mary, is the final fulfillment of
man’s vocation. It is in a way the fulfillment of the ‘destiny’ that God has prepared
for him from eternity. This ‘divine destiny’ is advancing, in spite of all the enigmas,
the unsolved riddles, the twists and turns of ‘human destiny’ in the world of time.
Indeed, while all this, in spite of all the riches of life in time, necessarily and inevi-
tably leads to the frontiers of death and the goal of the destruction of the human
body, beyond that goal we see Christ. ‘I am the resurrection and the life, He who
believes in Me...shall never die.’ In Jesus Christ, who was crucified and laid in the
tomb and then rose again, ‘our hope of resurrection dawned...the bright promise
of immortality’ (”Roman Missal”, Preface of Christian Death, I), on the way to
which man, through the death of the body, shares with the whole of visible crea-
tion the necessity to which matter is subject” (Bl. John Paul II, “Redemptor Ho-
minis”, 18).
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.
First reading | Exodus 34:29-35 © |
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Psalm | Psalm 98:5-7,9 © |
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Gospel Acclamation | Ps118:105 |
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Or | Jn15:15 |
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Gospel | John 11:19-27 © |
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Alternative Gospel | Luke 10:38-42 © |
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