FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT

Readings: Ezekiel 37.12-14 , Romans 8.8-11 , John 11.1-45

Our life can be an attempt, to get as much as possible from life: to work, to do and accomplish many things, to experience and enjoy many things, or simply to experience as consciously as possible everything going on in our life.

Death is a tremendous reality. Jesus knows well the purpose in Lazarus's death, indeed he "is glad" that he was not there to prevent his death. Yet he also, with Martha of Bethany, wept over the death of Lazarus, one of only two times recorded in the Gospel that Jesus wept. Jesus knows the depth of the darkness of death.

And Jesus gives us hope. His words to Martha are spoken and written for us as well: "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die." 

Towards the end of Lent the Church reminds us yearly of the reality of death from the perspective of the hope that Christ's life, death and resurrection gives us. For the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead will give life, meaning and hope to our mortal life and our concern for physical and spiritual life of our brothers and sisters, the beginning of eternal life in us.

Fr. Terry