Responsorial
Psalm – Psalm 129(130) ©
Second
Reading – Romans 8:8-11 ©
Gospel
Acclamation – John 11:25, 26
The Gospel According to John
11:1 - 45 ©
(NJB)
The Fifth Sunday of Lent
(Year A)
Listen!
The
bounds of death are no impediment for God’s salvific will. God will transit any
threshold to save, God will pierce any darkness to save God’s children.
Know
this:
God,
the creator of the universe, God is patient, God is loving and God is kind.
God
is the spirit of mercy and of justice. Take comfort in the knowledge that God’s
justice is never present without God’s mercy, as God’s wrath is never present
without God’s.
Learn
from God; become like God: be loving, be merciful, be patient, and show kindness
to all.
Do
not fall into the error of the Apostle.
Be
mindful!
Saint
Paul misses an important point in the reading for today; he makes a grievous
error.
Know
this:
The
spirit of God lives in all people. There is no question about it. God, the
creator of the universe, the God of Jesus Christ, God dwells in all people.
Do
not doubt it. We are all God’s children, and God loves every single one of us.
There is no exception.
The
spirit of Jesus lives in all people. We are all related to Jesus, he is our
brother. Our relationship to Jesus is an ontological reality that cannot be
abridged or denied. We do not have the power to undo it.
Our
relationship to God and Jesus is a determinative factor in the nature of our
being, as all of our relationships are, no matter how remote or distant from us
in time and space they might be.
Do
not forget this.
Consider
the Gospel for today and be mindful. God is not served by a false narrative
such as the narrative we are presented with in today’s reading. Therefore, we must
use reason to find a different meaning than the meaning which the narrative
plainly delineates.
The
story of Lazarus is pure myth, Jesus did not call a corpse from the tomb. The
story is either a complete fabrication, or Lazarus was not quite dead when he
heard Jesus call him.
We
must find the metaphor in the text, because to read it plainly is to subscribe
to a lie, which goes against the principles of the Church.
In
John the Lazarus narrative became convoluted by politics and the ongoing
disputes John’s community had with the Jewish people they lived in proximity
to, who they were doing everything in their power to distinguish themselves from.
In
John the narrative goes to the issue of who people believe Jesus was, the
Christ the Son of God, rather than who he actually was and what he actually
taught.
For
John’s community it was more important to believe the Church’s dogma, than to
live according to Jesus’s teachings, in this way they were no different from
the Pharisees and hypocrites Jesus struggled with.
In
the end, only our conduct matters, not what believe about Jesus, or his power
to raise the dead.
In
the end what matters is that we fill ourselves with the spirit that desires to
see everyone filled with life and wellbeing.
The
metaphor is this: We are all Lazarus, dead to the spirit of love, but if we
listen we will be able to rise from the tomb were our selfishness has brought
us, to emerge from that place of loneliness and alienation wherein we are
working contrary to the will of God.
We
can then embrace the light and move forward in God’s love.
I
Shall Put My Spirit in You, and You Will Live
The
Lord says this: I am now going to open your graves; I mean to raise you from
your graves, my people, and lead you back to the soil of Israel. And you will
know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and raise you from your
graves, my people. And I shall put my spirit in you, and you will live, and I
shall resettle you on your own soil; and you will know that I, the Lord, have
said and done this – it is the Lord who speaks.
Responsorial
Psalm – Psalm 129(130) ©
With
the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
Out
of the depths I cry to you, O Lord,
Lord, hear my voice!
O
let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleading.
With
the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
If
you, O Lord, should mark our guilt,
Lord, who would survive?
But
with you is found forgiveness:
for this we revere you.
With
the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
My
soul is waiting for the Lord.
I count on his word.
My
soul is longing for the Lord
more than watchman for daybreak.
(Let
the watchman count on daybreak
and Israel on the Lord.)
With
the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
Because
with the Lord there is mercy
and fullness of redemption,
Israel
indeed he will redeem
from all its iniquity.
With
the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
Second
Reading – Romans 8:8-11 ©
The
Spirit of Him who Raised Jesus from the Dead is Living in ou
People
who are interested only in unspiritual things can never be pleasing to God.
Your interests, however, are not in the unspiritual, but in the spiritual,
since the Spirit of God has made his home in you. In fact, unless you possessed
the Spirit of Christ you would not belong to him. Though your body may be dead
it is because of sin, but if Christ is in you then your spirit is life itself
because you have been justified; and if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from
the dead is living in you, then he who raised Jesus from the dead will give
life to your own mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you.
Glory
and praise to you, O Christ!
I
am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord;
whoever
believes in me will never die.
Glory
and praise to you, O Christ!
The Gospel According to
John 11:1 - 45 ©
I
Am the Resurrection and the Life
There
was a man named Lazarus who lived in the village of Bethany with the two
sisters, Mary and Martha, and he was ill. It was the same Mary, the sister of
the sick man Lazarus, who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet
with her hair. The sisters sent this message to Jesus, ‘Lord, the man you love
is ill.’ On receiving the message, Jesus said, ‘This sickness will end not in
death but in God’s glory, and through it the Son of God will be glorified.’
Jesus
loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, yet when he heard that Lazarus was ill
he stayed where he was for two more days before saying to the disciples, ‘Let
us go to Judaea.’ The disciples said, ‘Rabbi, it is not long since the Jews
wanted to stone you; are you going back again?’ Jesus replied:
‘Are
there not twelve hours in the day?
A
man can walk in the daytime without stumbling because he has the light of this
world to see by; but if he walks at night he stumbles, because there is no
light to guide him.’
He
said that and then added, ‘Our friend Lazarus is resting, I am going to wake
him.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he is able to rest he is sure to get
better.’ The phrase Jesus used referred to the death of Lazarus, but they
thought that by ‘rest’ he meant ‘sleep’, so Jesus put it plainly, ‘Lazarus is
dead; and for your sake I am glad I was not there because now you will believe.
But let us go to him.’ Then Thomas – known as the Twin – said to the
other disciples, ‘Let us go too, and die with him.’
On
arriving, Jesus found that Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days already.
Bethany is only about two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to
Martha and Mary to sympathise with them over their brother. When Martha heard
that Jesus had come she went to meet him. Mary remained sitting in the house.
Martha said to Jesus, ‘If you had been here, my brother would not have died,
but I know that, even now, whatever you ask of God, he will grant you.’ ‘Your brother’
said Jesus to her ‘will rise again.’ Martha said, ‘I know he will rise again at
the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said:
‘I
am the resurrection and the life. If anyone believes in me, even though he dies
he will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you
believe this?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ she said ‘I believe that you are the Christ, the
Son of God, the one who was to come into this world.’
When
she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in a low voice,
‘The Master is here and wants to see you.’ Hearing this, Mary got up quickly
and went to him. Jesus had not yet come into the village; he was still at the
place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were in the house
sympathising with Mary saw her get up so quickly and go out, they followed her,
thinking that she was going to the tomb to weep there.
Mary
went to Jesus, and as soon as she saw him she threw herself at his feet,
saying, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ At the
sight of her tears, and those of the Jews who followed her, Jesus said in great
distress, with a sigh that came straight from the heart, ‘Where have you put
him?’ They said, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus wept; and the Jews said, ‘See how
much he loved him!’ But there were some who remarked, ‘He opened the eyes of
the blind man, could he not have prevented this man’s death?’ Still sighing,
Jesus reached the tomb: it was a cave with a stone to close the opening. Jesus
said, ‘Take the stone away.’ Martha said to him, ‘Lord, by now he will smell;
this is the fourth day.’ Jesus replied, ‘Have I not told you that if you
believe you will see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. Then Jesus
lifted up his eyes and said:
‘Father,
I thank you for hearing my prayer. I knew indeed that you always hear me, but I
speak for the sake of all these who stand round me, so that they may believe it
was you who sent me.’ When he had said this, he cried in a loud voice,
‘Lazarus, here! Come out!’ The dead man came out, his feet and hands bound with
bands of stuff and a cloth round his face. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, let
him go free.’
Many
of the Jews who had come to visit Mary and had seen what he did believed in
him.
The Fifth Sunday of Lent
(Year A)
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