The Lord of Life (or the pale sign)

(Jn 11:1-45)

Jn 9:1-41 [the famous passage of the Born Blind] makes us reflect on the sign of the opening of the eyes.

Even in losers, there can be growth in awareness of personal dignity and vocation by Faith.

One question remains: a Light, if given in time... perhaps not much use.

Christ conveys to us a consciousness filled with perception and capable of sapiential, spiritual, missionary endeavour - but is there a final Goal or does it all end there?

If we have to fend for ourselves, what is the point of the biblical Promises? 

How come we feel longings for Fulness, then the plunge into nothingness?

Where is God's Love and omnipotence? What about the Risen One, the life of the Eternal One present among us? Has not his very life already been given to us?

The event of death disconcerts, and that of a friend of God in community [Bethany] perhaps accentuates questions about the meaning of our belief and commitment.

Why is it that in our hour of greatest need, the Lord allows us to fall? Why does he seem not to be there (v.21)?

Yet we understand that to be able to carry on an endless old age would not be a victory over death.

The belief of ancient cultures is that when the gods formed mankind they attributed death to it, and kept life for themselves.

Anyone who went in desperate search of the mythical herb that makes the old young had to resign himself: to die was to leave for a country with no return.

By letting even his dearest friends perish, Jesus educates us: it is not his intention to procrastinate biological existence (vv.14-15), nor simply to improve it a little.

Christ is not a 'doctor' who comes to postpone the appointment with death, but He who conquers death - because He transforms it into a Birth.

After all, a truly authentic, human and humanising life needs to look our condition in the face.

Health and physical life are gifts that everyone wants to prolong, but at the end they must be surrendered, in the Landing that no longer scratches.

Eternal [in the Gospels, the very Life of the Eternal: Zoè aiònios] is not this form of life [in the Gospels: Bìos - perhaps enhanced] but only its times of strong love.

This is the authenticity of grace to be asked for and developed. Perenniality to be responded to, a unique condition that does not give us checkmate.

The Ultimate World does not interfere with the natural course, although it may already manifest itself - in the intimate reality of multifaceted coexistence.

But this higher experience [of Covenant even with discomfort] lurks solely in that which is indestructible quality; personal, and in micro and macro relationships.

In particular, Communion: the only sign of the form of Life that takes on but does not waver, has no limits, and will have no end.

This is why the Lord does not enter the 'village' where others have gone to console and offer condolences.

He wants Mary to come out of the house where everyone is weeping in despair and offering condolences - as if everything were over.

She intends to get us out of the 'little village' where it is believed that the earthly end can only be senselessly deferred, to the tomb with no future.

He definitely wants us out of the little village where everyone is in mourning and left with the feigned consolation of funeral practices, 'relief' seasoned only with pretty phrases.

The natural emotion of parting does not hold back the tears, which spontaneously 'flow from the eyes, slide down' [dakryein-edakrysen].

The emotion does not produce a broken and shouted cry [klaiein] like the inconsolable one of the Jews [vv.33.35 Greek text; the Italian translation is confusing].

No farewell. This is followed by the order to remove the stone that at that time closed the tombs (v.39).

The strong reminder is absolutely imperative: the 'dead' are not 'dead', as the ancient religions believe; their life continues.

"Lazarus, out here!" [v.43 Greek text]: it is the cry of the victory of life. 

In the adventure of faith in Christ we discover that life has no stones on it.

Enough, groaning over deadly situations. They bring us closer to our roots, and to full bloom.

And we stop mourning the "dead"!

The appeal the Lord makes today - still after two millennia! - is that there is no such thing as a sunken world of the disappeared.

Compared to the going on earth, the departed are not well separated from us; in a place of their own, lacking communication with the present.

Archaic beliefs imagined Hades or Sheôl to be a dark cave, steeped in mist, here and there populated with insubstantial, wandering larvae.

The world of the living is not separate from that of the dead.

"Lazarus has fallen asleep" (v.11), i.e.: he is not a fallen man, for men do not die. They pass from creaturely life [bìos] to full Life [Zoè].The deceased has left this world and entered the world of God, re-born and begotten to his authentic, complete, definitive being.

Therefore: "Unbind him and let him go!".

In short, Lazarus did not simply end up in the grave, nor was he well revived by Christ he reappears in this form of life for another stretch... inexorably marked by limitation.

In the story, in fact, while everyone goes towards Jesus, Lazarus does not.

This is not what Jesus can do in the face of death. He does not immortalise this condition, otherwise existence would continue to be a useless flight from the decisive appointment.

And it is time to stop sobbing over the loved one: 'deceased', not 'dead'.

We should not hold it back with obsessive visits, tormented memories, talismans, condolences: let it exist happily in its new condition!

Life for us and Life for those who have already flourished in the world of God's Peace - where we live fully: with one another and for one another.

A condition that we can thus prefigure, dissolving not a few intimate blocks, external impediments, and relational laces; drowned in the moods of bitterness, consternation, and despondency:

"Even today Jesus repeats to us: 'Remove the stone. God did not create us for the grave, he created us for life, beautiful, good, joyful.

Therefore, we are called to remove the stones of everything that smacks of death: for example, the hypocrisy with which one lives the faith, it is death; the destructive criticism of others, it is death; the offence, the slander, it is death; the marginalisation of the poor, it is death.

The Lord asks us to remove these stones from our hearts, and life will then flourish around us again.

Christ lives, and whoever accepts Him and adheres to Him comes into contact with life. Without Christ, or outside of Christ, not only is there no life, but we fall back into death.

Let each one of us be close to those who are in trial, becoming for them a reflection of God's love and tenderness, which frees from death and makes life conquer".

[Pope Francis, Angelus 29 March 2020].

To internalise and live the message:

In the face of bereavement, what atmosphere do you perceive at home, in church, at the cemetery, during the funeral? And condolences, how do they affect you?

On Bethany [continuation of the Lazarus passage]:

Jesus Comes to the Feast, but as a stowaway

(Jn 11:45-56)

Christ is all that the Jewish feasts promised and proclaimed.

They decried authoritatively, but unconsciously (vv.47-52 take pleasure in double-meaning words).

The high priest was in fact speaking for God: he was interpreting the situation in a divinely inspired way.

In Christ, the promise made to Abraham was being fulfilled: the era of the dispersion of men was coming to an end.

The Cross would fulfil the vocation of the Temple: the recomposition of the people and the unity of the human being from the barren and distant land, in sharing and gratuitousness.

But what could also have been the starting point (energy) for Jesus not to retreat within the limits of his own environment down to the last detail, and to activate a path of rebirth?

The community of Bethany ['house of the poor'] is an image of the first realities of faith, destitute and composed of only brothers and sisters, without co-opted and appointed authorities. On a personal scale.

Where one could loosen those bonds that prevented one from going beyond the already known. Without patriarchs with calibrated, obsessive and vindictive control - where one does not look at oneself.

A nest of healthy relationships, which could give meaning even to wounds.

It is the only place where Jesus was at ease, the only reality in which we can still recognise him alive and present in the midst of - indeed, Source of life for the modest and needy.

Strident in the Gospel passage is the comparison with the vulgar cunning of the directors and the out-of-scale dimension of the commanded places and festivals.

As if no sap flows there between God's holiness and the real life of the lowly.

Despite the fact that the Master did good - as in all regimes, there was no lack of delinquents (v.46).

On the other hand, a large part of the inhabitants of Jerusalem found their material sustenance in the Temple activities.

Imagine if the top of the class would have let themselves be ripped off the bone to go after a stranger who intended to supplant the official institution and positions of privilege with an unadorned utopia.

The throne of the prince of the fraternal house was conversely without cushions, and the community co-ordinator a woman: Marta ['madam']. Backward, servant leader.

Anything but a reactionary defence of privileged positions and the ancient order... still all downward tensions and 'settling' according to chain of command, which never give us any hints of new life. A viscous situation that the initiative of the synodal path finally attempts to unhinge.Under Domitian, these small alternative realities - although caring for the small and distant - had to live like Jesus: clandestine.

They paid for their unity with the cross. But they renewed the life of the empire.