Fifth Sunday of Lent (Year A)
The famous story of the Rich Young Man bespeaks of life’s hardest question. “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Lk 18:18). Everyone seeks an eternity, looking for the meaning and purpose of life beyond the grave. To have purpose that transcends our very selves inspires us. It creates a legacy. We want to be remembered. We do not want to be forgotten. We long for an eternity: a meaningful life that endures forever.
For some, life’s purpose explores the wealth and riches of this life, as did the Rich Young Man. Yet, even in all his wealth, he found life empty. Riches and wealth do not give meaning and purpose. Death takes them away.
Jesus knew this and told the Rich Man to give up all he possessed, then he would inherit what he sought, eternal life. Yet, the Man could not detach himself from all his possessions. He left unfulfilled, abandoning his call to follow Christ. He lost his meaning, purpose, and eternal fulfillment because his heart was set on himself, not set on the eternal kingdom where we endure forever. Jesus comments on the hardness of his heart: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Lk 18:25). If our possessions possess us, we become enslaved to an empty meaningless life where rust and moths destroy our treasures.
Others find meaning and purpose of life through power and control. They lord it over others. Yet, Jesus corrects us again, “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant (Mt 20:26). Fullness of life comes from serving, not ruling. Still others find meaning and purpose in life seeking pleasure. Once again, Jesus informs us, “Man shall not live by bread alone” (Matt 4:4). The abundant life, as Jesus continues, comes from “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4). Fullness of life comes from relationships, from sharing and gifting love. Greed, power, and pleasure destroy the possibility of friendships; and in the process, destroy the person who seeks these rather than seeks God.
Life finds meaning in Christ and Him alone. He is the Word Who fills our souls with Spirit and Life. His Spirit and Life supplant our desire for riches and treasures, powers and pleasures. His Spirit fills us with a power which no earthly possession can compare. His Life communes with our heart which no earthly love can rival. He the Word made flesh transforms our earthly desires to become eternal realities. This eternal desire written in our hearts longs to receive God’s gift of Spirit and Life, but also to unite and commune with God because He offers us his eternity. To obtain eternal life, Jesus invites us to imitate Him. He gives his life away as a gift which is our ransom. Through this gift, we unite to God as we cut ourselves free from our earthly ways.
To have eternal life, we need a friendship with Christ and his Spirit, not with the spirit of the flesh and the world. His words effect what they mean. They also affect those who hear those words. God’s Word, a two-edge sword, cuts as well as heals, penetrates as well as discerns (Heb 4:12). The Word of God, powerful indeed, speaks and as it is spoken, it happens. “In the beginning”, we read, the Word spoke and “there was light” (Gen 1:1-3). When the Word speaks, its power brings forth life, love, and greatest purpose in life: friendship. This insight answers the Rich Man’s question concerning life’s meaning.
When God spoke, “Where are you?” (Gen 3:9), He penetrated the hearts of Adam and Eve, not to chastise them, but to heal them of their broken friendship. They had sinned and wandered away from God, losing their eternity. Losing their eternity, God restores his friendship, calling them out of their hiding, that shame which divorced them from their God.
Jesus is the fulfillment of the plan: to restore all things Christ, calls out too (Col 1:20; Eph 1:10). He cries, “Come Out! (John 11:43). When He spoke these words at the tomb of Lazarus, it happened. Lazarus died but his death glorifies God (John 11:4). Death came into the world through sin, but through the Word made flesh, death dies and life begins. Jesus came not to heal Lazarus of his illness but to raise him from the dead. Jesus comes into our life too, not just to heal us of our sinfulness, but to restore our life in God.
St. Paul encapsulated this communion with the Word Made Flesh when he states, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Ga 2:20).
St. John Paul II, a man who faced many hard questions, answered the hardest question concerning life when he speaking to Chileans, stating: “The Lord wishes this earthly life to be impregnated by this eternal and divine life in the Spirit, which is the life of charity, the life of the resurrection (John Paul II Homily April 5, 1987). Jesus came. He came to restore life and destroy death. The scene at the tomb reveals his power to overcome death with a word, just as He has the power to create through the Word.
Faith in the Word means, He lives in me! I partake in his life and He participates in me. I too am called out. No longer living in the darkness of the tomb, I be set free: unbound from my ties to this world: powers, pleasures and possessions.
In the Lazarus narrative, Jesus provokes us with his hard question: Do you believe this? (John 11:26). Believe what? That Jesus Himself is the Word of God, speaking life and love into all who listen. That if we believe in Him as the Word Made Flesh, we will inherit his life, eternal life. His question makes us think. He challenges our perceptions. He confounds us with his power to speak and change sin into hope, death into life, detachment into communion.
His action in Bethany penetrates and exposes our deepest fear: not death but despair. Despair teaches us life lacks meaning. My existence is a waste. The philosophy of Nihilism arises which is a “denial of humanity and the very identity of the human being” (John Paul II Fides et Ratio, # 90). It erases, as St. John Paul II continues, “the countenance of man and woman the marks of their likeness to God thus to lead them little by little either to a destructive will to power or to a solitude without hope (Fides et Ratio, # 90). Jesus, through the resurrection of Lazarus, teaches us the opposite: the “sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its end” (John Paul II Evangelium Vitae, # 2).
Death is a reality. It occurs because Adam and Eve fell from grace. Fallen, we don’t despair. Christ Who raised Lazarus from the dead, speaks and calls us out of our sin, the cause of despair. To counter this nihilism, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Death does not lead to despair. Death does not conquer. Jesus conquers death with his word: Come Out! Through death comes life, earthly and eternal. This is the Christian mystery.
Death does not open the door to despair. Jesus removes the door of despair and calls us out restoring our life with hope: the hope of eternal life. Hopeful, we see Jesus as the way, truth, and life. He came that we “may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10). Fulfillment comes from following Jesus, not abandoning Him as did the Rich Man.
Believing in the resurrection not only of Christ but ourselves is the foundation of our faith. It gives us a transcendent and transfigured meaning. As St. Paul states. “For if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins” (I Cor 15: 16 – 17). But if He did raise from the dead, which faith admits, we no longer live in our sin, but are alive in the Spirit.
When we say, “I believe in You”, as did Martha: “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world” (Jn 11:27), all things become possible. Faith empowers. Jesus, working through our faith, acts. He restores in us his image and likeness: his life and love. He, the Word of God, restores our lives from wallowing in our sin. Restored we are found full of grace. We come to know and believe, Christ does have “…the power to liberate humanity from the slavery of sin and death, the power to snatch humanity from the abyss of spiritual death and from condemnation” (John Paul II 3/31/1988).
Faith marvels because when we speak, and testify I believe, the words effect what we say. We no longer live under the cross of crucifixion, but we live in the glory of the resurrection. Death is swallowed up. Sin is forgiven. Despair becomes hope in eternal life. Divine Life then lives in us and we, full of the divine life, enlighten our world revealing our hope in eternal life.