Fifth Sunday of Lent

“I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live”

Jn 11, 1-45

Rev. Alexander Diaz

Today the word brings us to see Jesus, human and divine.  We don’t see only a Jesus who heals and resurrects at the same time, we see a Jesus who cries, who is perturbed by His friend’s death, a Jesus who has friends, a Jesus close to his people.  He was perturbed and wept over the loss of His friend.

This shows us the quality of human being that He was, His words become alive among us.   There are many people who, when the subject of death is approached, get shocked, they get depressed or they simply are afraid to touch the subject.  This will destroy them and submerge them in sadness. 

They try to prevent talking about death as much as possible.   Jesus gets close to us and gives us an answer, when we are confronted with the sad reality of death.  It is normal to falter when we lose a love one,  to miss him.  

It hurts us to see him return to the Father’s house,  it is normal to experiment all these feelings, we are not saying it is wrong to feel that way, even Jesus in today’s Gospel felt and do the same, what is not normal is not to accept this moment, which we all will go thru and face sooner or later. 

But that will only be a bridge that will mark the beginning of a new life.  So when we die, we will still live, spiritually speaking.   This Sunday’s Gospel makes us reflect in a profound manner about the subject of not only our corporal and biological death, but also the spiritual death that so many of us are submerged in our society.

Jesus goes to Lazarus tomb and tells them to “Take away the stone”.  Martha, sister of the deceased , answers: “Lord, by now there will be a stench, he has been dead for four days” Jn11,39).  The teacher is not worried about the stench, His only interest is to bring him out of the bad smelling and no sense tomb. 

The dead ones who need to come out of the tomb are those people who stop growing and have lost all hope.  Are the ones who live full of fears, when the Gospel tells us time and time again:  “Do not be afraid”.  Those are the people who have very easily thrown down the towel, when Jesus invites us to fight. 

To be dead in and buried in, is to be unhappy, is to allow love to die, to allow loneliness to win the fight, to be a coward, to be indifferent, the boredom of our routine, the absurdity of our past, the stubbornness of our pessimism and the in-satisfaction.

I do not get tired of saying, that many in this society do not live life to the fullest, they just  survive and agonize. There are many reasons that will make people lose their willingness to live.

There are many people who, instead of facing their serious problems would rather let themselves die.  I have always told myself, that to confront the difficulties and problems od this life, what I need to do is fight to overcome them.  It is sad and disheartening to see people be seized by loneliness, discouraged and disheartened; see how they suffer day by day. 

They get stock, they will not move neither interior or exteriorly, they constantly complain because they are unhappy but they are not willing to step out and go further than their boredom.    We have to read this Gospel remembering the prodical son (Lc ll) since the younger son “was dead and came back to life”.

 He came back to life because he was able to liven up, turn back his footsteps and move forward.  It does not pay to stand still and do nothing but complaint all day long.  You have to struggle, fight for what you want, you have to sacrifice to obtain what you desire.  

The suffering of many people could be avoided and diminished if they had the capacity to change, get up and go back to the Father’s house.  But no, they constantly complaint about their past, their present and their future.

To die, is to allow the different ways of dying (sins) present in the world, to win our earthly interior. To resurrect is to “stand up” and go back to the Father’s house. 

The words of Jesus impact me, when with authority, He calls out, from the tomb’s door.  The Gospel tells us that Jesus cried out in a loud voice:  “Lazarus, come out” (Jn. 11.43).  Jesus’ phrase is a spiritual order for us to come out of our inferiority complexes that do not allow us to love and be loved, to come out of our depressions, to come out of our exhausting and dying past, to come out of the frightening tomb to be a better person, to overcome our complexes and exceed ourselves, to live. 

To come out of that toxic environment that is killing us, an environment created by your own friends, coworkers, even your own family.  “GET UP”, Come out, breath the fresh air of the resurrection, of peace, of joy, of the goodness and the kindness you are losing.   Come out of the tomb, Jesus is telling you every day thru the people who love you.

Lazarus obeys and comes out, with difficulty, the Gospel tells us that “the dead came out, tied hands and foot with burial bands, and his face wrapped in a cloth”  So Jesus said to them: “Untie him and let him go”. (Jn. 11,44). Those words have a very deep meaning in this actual and modern world, because the modern world is full of people who are dedicated to suffocate, stifle others, they are the burial bands and cloth that will not allow Lazarus to freely come out. 

People who live their lives spreading the culture of death on them and others.  They are supporters, advocates of a world of death, they are the ones that normally and without regrets support the mother who is willing to abort, (kill) the child she carries in her womb.  They will advise a couple to get divorced, instead of fighting and struggling to save their marriage, they promote and encourage the idea of the terminally ill and the old be exterminated. 

These are people that in their project of life, if something does not come the way they planned, they will promote, as a quick way out, the auto elimination, suicide, as an expression of liberty.

 I will never support the culture of death, I will never agree with the ones who make death, breaching, breaking, dividing the solutions to their problems.  Do not become an accomplice to the well known “culture of death”.   The culture that Jesus brings us is, the culture of life, physical and eternal life. 

The resurrection that Jesus proposes to us, is of our hearts.  The person who is united to Christ will support and collaborate with Him so the interior of many human beings will be transformed and be, at the same time, able to transform others.  You and I were born to live, we were not born to die.  Remember and be aware of Jesus’ words: “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”.   Live in Christ.

Amen!!

FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT

“¿Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

Jn. 9, 1-38

Rev. Alexander Díaz

It is interesting to see how Lent advances, and what I love the most is to see how it develops; from the temptations, we pass to the transfiguration and from there to the encounter of Jesus with the woman from Samaria. 

The Liturgy, the readings of each Sunday center us towards the figure of Jesus. Finally, the whole period of Lent is oriented to remember the intense days of the Passover in Jerusalem, where Jesus lived His own personal Passover. 

The gospel of this Sunday marks another event in the public ministry of Jesus and is given thru the healing of a man who was born blind.  In the biblical text of today, to “see” is a symbol of faith. “To see” is to have faith. 

To recover the sight is to enter the world thru faith. To enter this world, it is necessary to be close to Jesus.  The blind man had never seen  the light, hence he received  many beatings, he had been knocked down many times throughout  his whole life, he had been led by people he didn’t know. 

Jesus gave him the gift of sight, to feel the real world, the freshness of light.  Faith is the refreshing element that helps us see clearly the problems of our lives, this is why it is necessary to hold on to Jesus’ hand, because He is the only one who can give us the light we need to go on. 

“To see” is to look at the world with Jesus’ eyes, to perceive life as the Lord wants it to be, not as we human beings have been demonstrating.   “To see” is to understand that to follow Jesus is not only to transmit a few concepts or some doctrines, for the most part repetitive and empty. To follow Jesus is to carry these concepts and doctrines deep down inside, to plant them with conviction in this life and thru this life others around us will also understand.  

I always tell the Catechists that the children, who are getting ready to receive the sacrament of first communion to show them with conviction, make them understand, that they live it, not to configure computers that do not understand what they are saying while praying to our Lord.

Many will say, the children are ready to receive first communion because they can pray, they know all the commandments and the sacraments.  To know all these is very important because it allows us to go further than what we believe in, but what is really most important is to live fully in Christ. 

 I am sure that if I ask the children they will answer with mathematical precision.  On the other hand, if I should ask them, who is Jesus, most likely for them, He is a stranger.  It is important to educate our children to know Jesus, be with Him face to face, without any nearsightedness that will frustrate our encounter with Him. 

To accept Jesus as the One sent by God, the One who is able to open our eyes to understand.  But to overcome our blindness, the lack of understanding, is a long process that each person must do on his/her own. 

In the center of all these events, are the Pharisees,  who doubt not only the miracle but the capacity of seeing that the blind man acquire.  The Pharisees represent the complete lack of understanding, the real blindness; they do not want to recognize Jesus, even though they have in front of them all the proof of His good deeds.

They only see that He healed this man on a Saturday and that, to them, is to disobey God.   Afterwards the blind man will step forward to confirm that “this man is from God” and he even began to “teach them”, giving lessons to the ones who were supposed to be the teachers of the Law. 

The positions have been reversed and that offends the Pharisees, they are not willing to learn, because they do not want to admit their blindness.  Our grandparents used to say, there is no worse blind, than the one who does not want to admit his blindness, that is how they represent their ignorance. 

To them is not enough to see, to have good eye sight and be able to distinguish the figures and forms.  There is also, another way of seeing, of knowing, another way to interpret the figures that are seeing. 

The Pharisees said that the man who was blind from birth was born blind as a result of sin and that is why he is unable to understand clearly what he sees.    I ask myself: ¿Why as human beings, we always have to judge and question God’s plan? ¿Why do we always have to be right, even when we are wrong?  ¿Why do we play with the signs that God sends us? 

Those are our real blindness, enclosed, inflexible, and without exits.   In today’s Gospel Jesus is able to transform a belief to a new valor.  Who did not perceived faith, now recognizes Him as the Messiah, now he can “see” the world and himself with a very different look.  

We need for Jesus to heal our blindness, which are more than one.  It is possible that our glance on others might be in a serious trend of conversion.  It is possible that your sincere desire to follow Christ produces magnificent possibilities of miracles towards the ones around you. 

But the blindness that must really worry you is your own, the one that does not allow you to see yourself as you are for God, for yourself and for the others. 

There are Christians able to perceive the blindness on other people but are not able to see their own darkness.  To be blind inside is not to find the path of hope, is to be an ignorant of God and oneself.  Jesus does not act on that person’s life because his mind is far away from His message; “To see” means to love. 

Whoever does not love, stays in absolute darkness, in the most profound death of his faith.   The fact is not to ask ourselves how much or how little we know about biblical texts, not even if we have deep theological knowledge. 

The question is if all I know will get me lovenly closer to God and others.   If I see myself growing in love, I am on the right path. If I perceive that my love for God and others decreases, then my blindness has grown. (Mario Santana Bueno)

We are Christians not only because we follow what Jesus said.  We are Christians because we follow Him in person.  We do not follow ideas, we follow Jesus, the healer and savior.   This gives me the impression that most of our brothers and sisters are not clear about faith.  They, as myself, need to be healed of their blindness.

Amen!!