Lazarus, in Lent

Friday, April 3, 2009 [Happy Birthday, Michael!]

[If I haven't heard from you that you read this blog, or visit it, I'd like to hear from you. It's meaningful to me, and helpful, but I'm evaluating whether I'll keep doing it after Lent. I'd especially like to hear from Church of the Apostles people. Thanks. markjdicristina@yahoo.com]

Jer. 29:1,4-13; Rom. 11:13-24; John 11:1-27

The appointed Gospel reading for these last two days before Holy Week are the account of Lazarus, dying and being raised from the dead. In the Orthodox tradition, this whole week is dedicated to the Lazarus story - Christ's encounter with death, before his encounter with Death (in our BCP Daily Office, it's only in "Year One").

The post a few weeks ago at my dicristina site (and yes, my last post there) on memory is from this "Lazarus" section of "Great Lent" by Alexander Schmemann. Here's some more:

"Liturgical celebration is thus a re-entrance of the Church into the event, and this means not merely its "idea," but its joy and sadness, its living and concrete reality... It is one thing to explain that the resurrection of Lazarus was "to confirm the universal resurrection." It is quite a different thing to celebrate day after day for one entire week this slowly apporaching encounter between life and death, to become part of it, to see with our own eyes and feel with our whole being what was involved in John's word: "He groaned in the spirit and was troubled and ... wept" (John 11:33-35). For us and to us all this happens today. We were not there in Bethany at the grave with the crying sisters. For the Gospel we only know about it. But it is in the Church's celebration today that an historical fact becomes an event for us, for me, a power in my life, a memory, a joy. Theology cannot go beyond the "idea." And from that point of view of idea, do we need those five long days when it is so simple just to say, "to confirm the universal resurrection"? But the whole point is that in itself and by itself the sentence confirms nothing. The true confirmation comes from celebration, and precisely from those five days on which we witness the beginning of that mortal fight between life and death, and begin not so much to understand as to witenss Christ going to put death to death... (p. 82-83)

I do believe Lent is a gift. Working it, walking it out, is a gift from God through the Church - to help us know a more full union with Jesus Christ, and to bear much fruit (John 12:24). And so meditating on this Lazarus account, is an amazing springboard into Holy Week... just as it was God's way to launch Jesus into his final week, his final encounter in the holy city with all those holy people, a powerful empire, and our ultimate enemy.

Also, check out My Utmost for October 11. I heard this read at Will Pufall's funeral yesterday, he had posted a year and a half ago, after the death of a friend of his... it's a good balance to John Eldridge.