Fifth Sunday of Lent

Father Phillip DeVous

Guest

Every single Sunday we profess the Creed and proclaim, “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, Amen.” Perhaps those words are so familiar to us that we fail to give them deep consideration. Yet, it is important to recall that prior to the coming of Jesus Christ, few in the history of the world thought that the resurrection of the dead was something even thinkable, much less a real possibility.

Faith is many things. One of the characteristics of faith, brought to us by the Holy Spirit, is that the Holy Spirit expands our sense of what reality entails in order that we might see clearly. We call such clear seeing Divine Revelation.

Nothing expands our sense of reality more than the idea of the Resurrection of the dead. The theologian, N.T. Wright writes, “Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project, not to snatch people away from earth to heaven, but to colonize earth with the life of Heaven” The resurrection does not invalidate the value of our present bodily life just because it will die. Rather, it shows us that what we do with, and in, our present bodily life matters because God has a great, eternal future in store for it, a purpose first revealed in his Incarnation.

To realize this glorified communion, we must contend with the lack of glory we now experience as part of our conversion from sin to sanctity; from vice to virtue; from death to life himself. St. Paul makes this clear when he says, “those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.”

The word “flesh,” as St. Paul uses it, does not mean the body. It means the whole of fallen and mortal nature, body and soul. And “spirit,” as used here, does not mean “soul,” but the whole of redeemed human nature now under God’s Holy Spirit. “The Holy Spirit is God. God performs miracles by the Holy Spirit,” as the theologian, Peter Kreeft explains. “That’s how he raised Jesus from the dead, and that is how he will raise us with Jesus, in Jesus, as part of his Body the Church.”

We are given pause to consider the first miracle all of us in the Church have received: the gift of faith in Jesus Christ. This is no small thing given how God has been eclipsed in contemporary life, where the ego and its desires are now paramount. As the darkness consequent of the eclipse of God rolls menacingly across the landscape of contemporary life, we can see just what a miracle the gift of faith is. It is gift that gives us a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, the light of the world.

The Holy Gospel relates that Martha and Lazarus were close friends of Jesus. Martha had a stronger intuition than most as to who Jesus was and of what he was capable. Yet, the death of her brother Lazarus was incomprehensible to her. Jesus himself was overcome with grief at his friend’s passing — he too wept. This teaches us that our suffering is not outside of God’s attention. Christ holds it before the Father. As the Eternal Son of God gazes at the Heavenly Father and the Heavenly Father gazes back, we are all seen and beheld in every aspect of our existence by God.

Before Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, he first raises Martha’s faith from the temptation to despair spurred by grief and death. From her he elicits an act of faith in the Spirit and power of God. “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”

For a person to receive the gift of faith is a miracle greater than that of raising a corpse to life. A living person can resist Jesus; people resist faith. A dead body, however, has no power to resist Jesus.

Martha’s act of faith expands her sense of reality; of what’s possible with Jesus. Now she can then see with the eyes illumined by faith, with the gift of knowledge from the Holy Spirit. She knows who Christ is. Her revivified faith gives her confidence in Jesus’s power to restore life in ways we can perceive, as well as in ways we are not yet ready to see but will.

Father Phillip W. DeVous is the pastor of St. Charles Parish, Flemingsburg and St. Rose of Lima Parish, Mayslick, Ky.