The account notes that Jesus loved Lazarus and his sisters and that when Lazarus died of illness, Jesus wept and was greatly. Lazarus of Bethany was the brother of Martha and Mary and lived at Bethany, near Jerusalem. When I experience how entombed I have been, tied and bound, no longer alive, dead for a long time, I will sense the power of the command of Jesus that I “come forth.”įor an artistic interpretation of this Gospel story, see Arts & Faith: Lent. The miraculous story of Lazarus being brought back to life by Jesus is known from the Gospel According to John (11:145). The grace will come when I experience how my “deaths” will not end in death but in giving glory to God. Jesus shouts the liberating words of life, “Lazarus, come forth!” How is he shouting that to me today? This celebration was originally confined to the diocese of Rome, but Pope Gregory IV (827-844) extended the. In her grief, Martha told Jesus honestly what she had expected from him. As soon as she heard that Jesus was nearby, Martha, a woman of action, went out to meet him, while Mary stayed in the house. As the postulator for his cause, Father Joseph Elphinstone told Vatican Radio that Devasahayam is a poignantly significant figure for India. Gregory ordered his priests to celebrate the Feast of All Saints annually. When Jesus finally came, Lazarus had already been dead for four days. Devasahayam, who took the name ‘Lazarus’ in 1745, was first approved for sainthood in February 2020 for enduring increasing hardships after he decided to embrace Christianity. Could he be staring at and facing the tomb of his own death? Can I be with him there? Can I stand before and face the tombs in my daily life? The current date of November 1 was instituted by Pope Gregory III (731-741), when he consecrated a chapel to all the martyrs in Saint Peters Basilica in Rome. He places no barriers to his feelings about death. Jesus ordered that the gravestone be rolled away, and then raised Lazarus from the dead. Where do I doubt that Jesus can bring life? Where do I resent the losses in my life and somehow blame God for them?Įven when Jesus tells Martha, “I am the one who raises the dead to life!” she finds it hard to believe. Martha speaks profound sorrow at the death of Lazarus, but it is tinged with blaming Jesus: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” John clearly saw the Lazarus event as the last great deed Jesus performed as proof of his divinity before his arrest and crucifixion.The following reflection is based on John 11:1–45. However, Luke’s account of this event is much briefer than John’s Lazarus story, and it happens much earlier in Jesus’ life. In Luke 7:14-15, Jesus raises the dead son of a widow, with the wording of Luke (‘And he that was dead sat up’) being echoed by John’s ‘And he that was dead came forth’. Whatever the truth of it, there are examples elsewhere in the Gospels of Jesus raising the dead. It’s possible (as the authors of the Dictionary of the Bible suggest) that John is expanding the parable of the rich man and Lazarus from Luke’s gospel (in which Lazarus, the humble beggar, goes to heaven but the rich man does not). But only John mentions the story of Jesus raising Lazarus (the other one) from the dead. Luke (chapter 16) tells of Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus, but this Lazarus (a beggar) isn’t the one whom Jesus raised from the dead. They appear to have been different people. Lazarus is the poor man at the gate of the rich man in Christs parable related in Luke. Confusingly, though, there are two Lazaruses mentioned in the New Testament. Through being brought back to life by Jesus, Lazarus became famous. Bethany is now the West Bank town of Al-Eizariya, which translates to ‘the place of Lazarus’. Who was Lazarus? Lazarus was known in full as ‘Lazarus of Bethany’.
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