Homily originally presented March 29, 2020

The only way to live!

Over the last three Sundays lengthy Gospels have described situations

that would bring anxiety and even fear in most of us:

1. There was the woman who went to the well because she was thirsty
2. There was the man who couldn’t see because he was born blind
3. And today there’s the man laying in a tomb because he was

Thirst, and blindness, and death.

Those are pretty frightening things!

Who wants to be any of these things?

No one wants to be thirsty or blind or dead.

And yet maybe we are. Maybe not from a physical standpoint at this moment.

But from a spiritual standpoint, we just might be all of these things at once!

It’s important to understand that we human beings are a unity of body and soul.

There’s our body, that we can see, and there’s our soul, that we cannot see.

They work together but the Spirit is by far the more important reality because our mortal body will one day die, but our immortal soul will continue to exist in eternity.  

… either alive in blissful union with God

or dead in eternal suffering and separation from God.

Jesus wants us to understand this and take it seriously!

He wants us to trust Him and listen to Him and follow Him ... so that we,

His brothers & sisters, experience union and not separation,

 life and not death.

From the time of Ezekiel the Prophet, who preached 600 years before Jesus, God made reference to sending His Holy Spirit so that we might have eternal life.

In today’s passage God says, “I will put my spirit in you that you may live.”

What a clear reference that is to the life-giving power of God’s Spirit.

Yes, we need to have His Spirit in us in order to live … eternally with Him.

How many people there are who either don’t know this or don’t believe it!

2/3’s of the world have yet to be baptized! And even many Christian parents allow their kids to grow old without being baptized!

How sad! In our Second Reading from Romans, Paul clearly says,

“you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.”

Spirit with a capital “S” refers to God’s Holy Spirit.

Here, Paul is saying that our human spirit is alive only if God’s Holy Spirit dwells in it, which is precisely what happens at Baptism …

God’s Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us.

That’s the same Holy Spirit that God breathed into Adam to give him life.

That’s the same Holy Spirit that and brought Jesus to life in Mary’s womb.  

That’s the same Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead.

That’s the same Holy Spirit brings us the Bread of Life in the Eucharist.

That’s the same Holy Spirit that gives new life to our souls in Confession.  

We affirm all of this every time we pray our Creed where we say,

“We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.”

And where does the Holy Spirit come from. As we say in the Creed,

“who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”

God’s Holy Spirit is life. And He, the Third Person of the Trinity come from Jesus.

 Jesus affirms this in our Gospel today when he declares,

“I am the resurrection and the life.”

Those are powerful words ... but the people didn’t believe Him.

Like so many people today, the Jews were reluctant to believe that Jesus was indeed the Son of God and that He had the power to give them eternal life.

So Jesus took the occasion of the death of His friend Lazarus, to perform a miracle

to prove that He has power over life and death!

Imagine knowing that someone has been dead and buried for 4 days,

and then hear Jesus call him, saying, “Lazarus, come out!”

Imagine how shocking that must have been to see Lazarus walk out of that tomb bound hand and foot ... alive ... and then set free from his burial wrappings!

What an incredible and spectacular miracle.

The finality of death overcome by the giver of all life.

What a joy for all to see physical life restored.

Scripture says that it moved many of the Jews to begin to believe in Jesus.

It had to!

That’s the most unbelievable event anyone had ever seen.

This wasn’t just a cure from blindness or deafness or lameness.

This was a total recovery ...  from death ... to life!

And the most spectacular part about this whole event was that the power of Jesus

goes way beyond just raising Lazarus from physical death.

What Jesus really wants us to believe is that He has the power

to also raise us from spiritual death ... to spiritual life!

He showed us this by first demonstrating His power on something that we can see, one’s mortal body, to get us to believe that His power will also work on

something we can’t see, one’s immortal soul.

This was not the first time that Jesus performed such a teaching miracle.

Recall back in the 6^th Chapter of John when Jesus first fed the 5000 by miraculously multiplying 5 loaves and 2 fish. And then after calling Himself the Bread of Life ... He directs the people to feed on Him … calling forth their faith that if He could miraculously feed them physically,

that He could also miraculously feed them spiritually!

And indeed He does through the miracle of the Holy Eucharist,

which Jesus instituted at the Last Supper and

which takes place over and over again at every Mass!

The raising of Lazarus from the dead was conducted to show the glory and power of God and to convince the people that Jesus desires our eternal life

and not our eternal death.

Jesus intentionally waited to go to see Lazarus until after he died.

Jesus could have gone right away, but He wanted to do more than cure him;

He wanted to bring him back ... from death to life.

In our First Reading today, God says through the Prophet Ezekiel, “Then you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and have you rise from them.”

You see, no one had ever been raised from the dead before. So God is saying, when you see this unbelievable event of the dead rising from their graves,

 then you will know that I am your All-Powerful God!

And God gave the people his promise that this would do this ...

saying through Ezekiel: “I have promised and I will do it, says the Lord.”

Today, God showed them that He indeed had the power that He said He had.

Jesus, the All Powerful Son of God, raised Lazarus from his grave!

In our Gospel today, Martha and Mary both expressed the kind of complete trust that God wants us to have in Him. They both made the same profession of faith:

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

These women had seen the mighty deeds that Jesus had done so they had complete confidence that He could do anything He wanted to do. Martha says, “Even now (that Lazarus has died) I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”

What abandonment! What trust!

That’s what God wants. He wants us to trust that He is on our side and that following Him is the very best thing that we could ever do for our Eternal Salvation.

He wants us to believe that He has the power and desire to give us Eternal Life.

So how do we tap into this power?

In our Second Reading, St. Paul tells us,

“If the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,

the One who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also”

God gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit on the day of our Baptism.

That’s when he fulfills His words, “I will put my Spirit in you!”

And each time we receive another Sacrament, such as Confirmation, Confession or Holy Communion, God pours forth more of His Holy Spirit in us.

So where are we to go to have our spiritual thirst quenched,

our spiritual sight returned ... and our spiritual life restored?

There’s only one place to go and that’s to Jesus.

Jesus, the Son of God, is the only one with the power to cure us from our infirmities.

as He says today: “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” 

and He proved what He said in the most powerful way

when He raised Himself from the Dead after 3 days in the tomb!

We know where Life is to be found ... it’s in Him ... who is Life.

Let’s remember this always, especially when we experience anxiety and fear in our human condition ... when we worry about getting sick and dying from a virus.

If we have Jesus ... we have Life.

As Jesus says today:

“Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,

and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

Yes, believing in Jesus is the only way to live.

So, let’s put our hope and trust in Him ... who is Eternal Life!