Three Meditations on the Miracle of Lazarus

I. 

The Gospel for the catechumens this Sunday is that of the miraculous raising of Jesus’ friend Lazarus from the dead.  But the narrative of the miracle which has become synonymous with this name begins very simply:  “Now a man was ill. . . .”  Certainly not every bout with sickness leads us immediately to think of death, especially in those parts of the world where the practice of modern medicine has attained so many successes (however partial or temporary).  But serious illness can in fact focus the mind to consider the certainty and nearness of the horizon of our mortality.

Several years ago I was playing in the waves along the shore of Lake Michigan.  Others were on the beach, and in the extended delight of my pretend battle with the elements I did not notice the gradual increase of the frequency and intensity of the waves.  Before I knew it I was unable to move back to shore and realized to my horror that I was trapped in a rip current.  The people on shore apparently did not see me, still less realize that I was entering panic mode.   And then I recall thinking with mysterious serenity and clarity:  This is it.  This is the end of my life.  So this is what it feels like to die.  In this moment which seemed both beyond time and encompassing the whole time of my life, I then received the presence of mind to swim along the rip current rather than struggle against it.  It so happened that the lake house at which I was staying---aptly named “Providence House”---had a yellowed newspaper clipping on the kitchen refrigerator warning of rip currents in Lake Michigan and what to do when caught in one.  I walked back to shore alive, spent, grateful, and wiser---thanks to obeying that old news.

My experience with the initial TMJ diagnosis and the description of the serious surgery and its very challenging, lengthy recovery process also evoked in me similarly powerful feelings of “illness-unto-death”---but with a subtle and profound difference:  I realized that I needed to face (and actually grieve) the loss of my “healthy” forty-some years of life as I had known them.  And through all of the occasional panic and frequent waves of anger, there emerged in prayer---my own, and surely through that of others---a great and growing peace beyond my mortal misery, so strangely similar to what I felt in the midst of mortal danger in Lake Michigan.  In prayer it became clear that whatever I had to go through was not outside of the Lord’s plan but taken up into it.  Many of my personal superficial cares and plans simply disappeared, as did the weight I gave to the larger churning of events in the so-called wider world. 

The response of the Lord Jesus to the “bad news” of Lazarus’ illness was exactly the “Good News” that came to be my peace:  “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God,
that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”  Yes, I would live whatever came “for the glory of God,” having learned to walk this path not from a faded newspaper in someone else’s house, but from first sharing the lives of so many of the chronically and mortally ill people of my Parish Home.   As they walked this path from panic to peace ahead of me, they became---by the grace of the Crucified and Risen Lord---my teachers (often unwitting but always expert) in the Way of the Cross leading to Easter.  So it must continue this Lent in the life of the Church, moving together toward the tomb to rise from it in Christ.

II.

The body of Lazarus, the Gospel tells us, was in the tomb---a cave---for four days.  It was here Jesus came to face His friend in a new way, as old as the tears of human mourning for the apparently final loss of one who is loved. 

Son of suburbia that I am, my first viscerally serious staring of death in the face (expired hamsters and permanently sleeping Skippy the dog notwithstanding) was at a strange Roman church located behind Piazza Farnese, along the Via Giulia in the Eternal City.  The name of the small chapel is Santa Maria dell’Orazione e Morte---Holy Mary of Prayer and Death.  It is not a famous tourist attraction (like the better known Capuchin “bone church” of Rome on the Via Veneto) but a silent little sanctuary administered by a group of pious Christians.  Historically this association of the faithful had as their apostolate the dredging of dead bodies from the Tiber to give unclaimed lives---first created in the image and likeness of God---a worthy Christian burial.  This work of fulfilling the last corporal work of mercy continues in this community’s on-going enfolding of the dead in the prayers of the Church.

In any case, as a sophomore on the St. Mary’s Rome Program in 1988 filled with all sorts of questions about life and faith, I hunted down this church with the be-skulled façade from directions in a guide book and was told to be sure and visit the crypt to see some REAL BONES!  So, upon finding it, down the stairs I went with my friends, and we marveled at the macabre spectacle.  The crypt was dark and filthy, with a variety of bones layered in years of dust arranged in a gruesome chandelier; countless other bones were just strewn about.  I remember picking up a femur, only to put it back down immediately.  This was surely a memento mori---a reminder of mortality---alla romana!

A few years after I was ordained, I came back to this church, not as a practitioner of gawking tourism or detached forensics, but as a pilgrim and a Priest.  When I entered what had once seemed to me an empty, neglected place, there was by contrast on this occasion a be-habited Sister at prayer before the Tabernacle.  She gave every appearance of being part of a living religious congregation staffing this place, so I made bold to ask permission to go downstairs to the crypt to pray.  Consent granted, I descended to behold---to my happy surprise---that in the intervening decades since my first visit, the burial chamber had been cleaned up.  The walls were white and the bones reverently arranged.  This enormous tomb had been transformed into a lovingly cared for place of Christian prayer. 

I remember looking at a row of skulls, some of them neatly labeled on the brow with information like names and (presumably) dates of burial.  I must admit that I picked one up and held it in my hands for the sheer marvel of cradling so intimately the mortal frame---bone which once housed thoughts greater than the universe---created and redeemed by Christ for immortal glory.  Setting the skull back in its place next to its neighbors, I blessed the forehead of each one, claiming for them (and through them for me) the graces of Ash Wednesday and of Easter.  The custodian eventually came downstairs and eyed me suspiciously, so I finally went back up and out of that church into a world less real for being revealed as so superficially alive.

During my initial evaluation at the Piper Clinic last September, I spent quite some time with Dr. Mark Piper reviewing the CT-scans and MRIs of my skull obtained earlier that day.  I was beyond amazed at how on the computer the doctor and I were able to explore the complex design of my very own skull, with all of its little abnormalities and injuries.  It was such a mysterious privilege to “look inside” my head with one who, at least medically, knew more about---and was able to help---me far beyond my abilities.  To this day, I have a CD copy of these three-dimensional photos of my skull on my computer---thank God, not to contemplate the dead but to quicken my understanding of what it means to be alive!

I think of how Martha and Mary and Lazarus were friends with Jesus precisely because they allowed Him to look within them with love; and they in turn dared to accept Christ’s invitation into the intimacy of His life.  In these days leading up to the Passion, we do not neutrally examine for the sake of fulfilling curiosity a Head crowned with thorns, or Hands and Feet nailed, or a Heart pierced.  We are invited into this Mystery of mysteries like the Apostles, so that we “may believe”---and in believing we might be healed and saved for life eternal.

III.

The Gospel narrative of Lazarus being raised from the dead concludes with what can properly be called a “Divine Comedy.”  A comedy is, after all, a drama with a happy ending.  But here there is more:  Lazarus is alive but still bound; he must “hop” to Jesus wearing his burial bands even before he is able to see everything new that has happened to him!     

In my weeks and months of recovery from surgery, I must say that I sympathize more with the crazy predicament of Lazarus.  Being bound by my surgical braces and the accompanying macramé of restrictive rubber bands has given me a deeper sense of how one’s problems can be both essentially “fixed” yet temporally still “on the mend.”  My jaw just needs time to rest and fully heal into its new, healthy position; but this also requires periods of necessary freedom and a regimen of self-initiated physical therapy several times a day.

When Jesus points to Lazarus and commands His disciples---the nascent Church---to “untie him and let him go,” our Savior is using the same word regarding the freeing of His friend that He employs in His commission to St. Peter to “bind” and “loose” sin.  To our great joy, Pope Francis is the latest in the Petrine succession to guarantee that this divine gift of mercy is safeguarded and extended in the life of the Church.  Many secular observers hope that the new Pope will have an “open mind” to give them something different from the Catholic Faith---that Papa Francesco will “loosen up a bit” on aspects of faith and morals which conflict with the spirit of the age (which ignores death and shuns dying to self, even as it furthers a “culture of death”).  The maxim of the late Catholic journalist G.K. Chesterton---who at about 300lbs. had a lot riding on the resurrection of the body!---is here freshly apropos:  “Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”  I long for the day when my mouth can once again literally do what my intellect bound by faith has been freed by Christ to do, all along and forever.