20 March 2027 · Syro-Malankara Rite
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“Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”” John 11:40
The Forty Days ended yesterday; Hosanna Sunday is tomorrow. Between them, like the Churches of the East, our Church keeps the Saturday of Lazarus. The order is the order of John's Gospel: the raising of Lazarus is the last and greatest of Jesus' signs, and it opens the road to Jerusalem. John tells us that the crowd who came out with palms came “not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.” Today's Gospel begins as Martha goes to call her sister: “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” Mary rises quickly, and the friends who were consoling her follow, thinking she is going to the tomb to weep. She falls at Jesus' feet with the same words Martha had said: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Then John shows us the heart of God made flesh: “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” He asks, “Where have you laid him?” They answer, “Lord, come and see.” And “Jesus began to weep.” The mourners, neighbours and friends of the family who had come from Jerusalem to share their grief, say, “See how he loved him!” Many of them, John tells us, believed in him that day.
At the tomb, a cave with a stone across it, Jesus says, “Take away the stone.” Practical Martha protests: “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus answers: “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” He lifts his eyes and thanks the Father, and “he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth.” St Leo the Great wrote that it belongs to the man in Christ to weep over a dead friend, and to the God in Christ to call him back to life by a word (in substance). One Person, true God and true man, weeps and raises. And the last command is given to the bystanders: “Unbind him, and let him go.” St Augustine saw here an image of the sinner who comes out of the tomb of sin by confessing: Christ alone gives life, but he has entrusted to his Church the ministry of unbinding (in substance). Before Easter, there is no better way to keep Lazarus Saturday than to come out of our tomb in the sacrament of Confession and let the Church unbind us.
Lazarus would die again; his raising was a sign. Paul proclaims the reality it points to: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died… for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” Christ's Resurrection is not a return to this life but the first fruits of the harvest of the risen body, and “the last enemy to be destroyed is death.” Genesis today closes the story of Rebekah. Her family asks her one question: “Will you go with this man?” and she answers in one word: “I will.” She leaves her home for a bridegroom she has never seen. St Ambrose saw in Rebekah the Church, and every soul, going out in faith to meet Christ (in substance). Abraham's servant says, “Do not delay me.” Tomorrow the Lord rides into Jerusalem. Will we go with this man? With Rebekah, let us answer, “I will.”
Theme: “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
On Lazarus Saturday: the tears of the God-man, the voice that calls the dead, the first fruits of the resurrection, and the bride who says “I will.”
“he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,” Isaiah 25:8
“Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,” John 11:25
Apply: Visit or call a grieving family this week and pray with them.
“Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.” Ezekiel 37:12
“The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” 1 Corinthians 15:26
Apply: Make a good Confession before Easter, and let the Church unbind you.
“Hear, O daughter, consider and incline your ear; forget your people and your father’s house,” Psalm 45:10
“I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I promised you in marriage to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 11:2
Apply: Tomorrow, with your palm in your hand, tell the Lord: I will go with you through this Holy Week.
The God-man weeps at the tomb and calls the dead to life; Christ is the first fruits of the resurrection.
With Rebekah we answer “I will” and go with him into Jerusalem.
Take-home resolution: Come out of the tomb, be unbound, and go with Jesus into Holy Week.
Dear friends, the forty days ended yesterday, and tomorrow is Hosanna Sunday. Today, Lazarus Saturday, we stand at a tomb in Bethany. Mary falls at Jesus' feet and says: Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died (John 11:32). And Jesus began to weep (John 11:35).
Jesus is true man: he feels our grief, he cries with us. And Jesus is true God: he says, Take away the stone, and then he cries with a loud voice: Lazarus, come out! (John 11:39, 43). The dead man comes out. Jesus said to Martha: Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God? (John 11:40).
Then Jesus says to the people: Unbind him, and let him go (John 11:44). St Augustine saw here a picture of Confession: Christ gives us new life, and the Church unbinds us (in substance). Holy Week begins tomorrow. Let us come out of our tombs and be unbound in Confession before Easter.
Lazarus would die again one day. But Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died (1 Corinthians 15:20), and the last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Corinthians 15:26). And like Rebekah, who was asked, Will you go with this man? and answered, I will (Genesis 24:58), let us tomorrow take our palms and say to Jesus: I will go with you. Amen.
Children, when Jesus' friend Lazarus died, Jesus cried. Jesus cries with us when we are sad. But then he called: Lazarus, come out! and Lazarus came out alive. Jesus is stronger than death. Tomorrow bring a palm leaf to church and wave it for Jesus, our King who gives life!
Lord Jesus Christ, you wept at the tomb of your friend Lazarus and called him out by your word. You are true man, who shares our grief, and true God, who gives life to the dead. Call us out of every tomb of sin and fear, and let your Church unbind us in the sacrament of mercy. Strengthen our faith in the resurrection of the body, for you are the first fruits of those who have died. And as we come to Hosanna Sunday, give us Rebekah's ready answer, that we may say, “I will,” and go with you into Jerusalem, to your Cross and your Resurrection. Amen.
Between the Fortieth Friday and Hosanna Sunday stands the Saturday of Lazarus. Before the Lord enters his city to die, he goes to the tomb of a friend, weeps, and calls the dead man out. The three readings stand around that scene. Genesis ends its long story of the servant with a young woman's word, “I will”, and she leaves her home to go to a bridegroom she has never seen. Paul says that Christ is “the first fruits” and that “the last enemy to be destroyed is death”. John shows the same victory in one family's grief, at one tomb. The key words are I will, first fruits and come out.
Setting.
This week's readings have followed the servant from Abraham's house to the well and into the home of Rebekah's family. The verses just before today's reading (24:42–49) finish his account and end with a plain request: tell me whether you will deal loyally with my master.
Marriages in that world were arranged between families, and this one is too. So the moment in verses 57–58 stands out all the more, when her own consent is asked for and given. Abraham had foreseen that “the woman” might not be willing (24:8), and the narrator lets her decide.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“The thing comes from the Lord; we cannot speak to you anything bad or good.” (24:50)
Laban and Bethuel recognise what has been happening. The servant's careful retelling has done its work. The story that was told as God's doing is now confessed as God's doing.
“Do not delay me, since the Lord has made my journey successful;” (24:56)
Ten days seems little to ask, and it is a natural plea from a mother. The servant's urgency is the same as in his refusal to eat. When God has acted, one goes.
“Will you go with this man?” She said, “I will.” (24:58)
This is the high point of the chapter, in a single word. She is told little and has no guarantee. Mary's “let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38) comes to the Christian reader's mind at once.
“May you, our sister, become thousands of myriads;” (24:60)
The blessing goes with her on the road. It is a good thing for a family that cannot keep a daughter to send her with such words.
“Then Rebekah and her maids rose up, mounted the camels, and followed the man;” (24:61)
The camels she watered now carry her. She “follows” a servant toward someone she has not seen.
How the Church reads it.
The Fathers saw in this journey the Church going to Christ. The first letter of Peter describes the same love: “Although you have not seen him, you love him” (1 Peter 1:8). St Ambrose wrote on Isaac and on the soul as a bride going to her bridegroom (On Isaac, or the Soul, in substance). On the eve of Hosanna, the question to Rebekah is put to each of us: will you go with him, along this road, this week?
Setting.
Some in Corinth were saying that “there is no resurrection of the dead” (15:12). Paul has answered that if that were so, Christ was not raised, and faith is futile (15:13–19). Now he turns: “But in fact Christ has been raised”. He then sets out what follows from it, from Adam to the very end of all things.
He writes around the years 54 or 55, and this is among the oldest Christian writing we have on the Resurrection. A few verses earlier he has handed on an ancient list of those who saw the risen Lord (15:3–8).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.” (15:20)
The whole argument rests on this one fact. The Christian hope does not begin from a general idea about the soul, but from something that has happened to one man.
“for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” (15:22)
The Catechism quotes this on Christ's Resurrection as the source of ours (CCC 655). Paul means two heads of a humanity: what the one brought to all, the other brings to all who belong to him (15:23).
“The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (15:26)
Death will not be left standing at the end. Lazarus will die again, as every person raised before Easter did, but in the end death itself goes.
“so that God may be all in all.” (15:28)
The last line of the whole story. The Catechism uses it to speak of the fullness of the Kingdom, when God will be all in all in eternal life (CCC 1060).
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism sets Christ's Resurrection as “the principle and source of our future resurrection” (CCC 655), and the Creed that we pray at each Holy Qurbono ends on the same point: we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. On a Saturday when the Church looks at one raised man, Paul supplies the larger horizon. Lazarus's rising is a sign; Christ's is the reality; ours is the promise.
Setting.
Bethany is close to Jerusalem (11:18). Lazarus, Martha and Mary are friends whom Jesus loves (11:5). He has delayed coming, and Lazarus is now four days in the tomb. Martha has already met him on the road and heard the great word, “I am the resurrection and the life” (11:25). Today's reading begins as she goes to fetch her sister.
In this scene “the Jews” are not authorities opposing Jesus. They are neighbours and friends who have come from Jerusalem to comfort the sisters, as good people do (11:19). Many of them will come to believe (11:45), and some will report to the Pharisees (11:46). Elsewhere in John the word often means the leaders who oppose him, and it never means a whole people bearing blame (CCC 597).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” (11:28)
A sentence that any disciple can hear in a time of grief.
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (11:32)
She says just what Martha said (11:21), and this is not a lack of faith. It is the honest prayer of grief. Jesus does not correct her, and he does not reply with a teaching.
“Jesus began to weep.” (11:35)
The shortest verse in most English Bibles, and among the deepest. He knows what he is about to do, yet he weeps. God's Son truly takes our sorrow on himself.
“Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”” (11:39)
Jesus lets people do what people can do. Raising the dead is his part. Moving the stone is theirs, and so is the unbinding afterwards.
“Father, I thank you for having heard me.” (11:41)
The prayer of thanks comes before the miracle. The Catechism notes this: thanksgiving comes before the event (CCC 2604). The prayer is said aloud so that the crowd may believe that the Father sent him (11:42).
“Unbind him, and let him go.” (11:44)
The cloths remain on Lazarus, for he will need them again. When John tells of Jesus' tomb, the cloths are left behind (20:6–7). St Augustine hears in this verse also what the Lord gives through his Church in Confession (in substance).
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism sees the raising of Lazarus as a sign that announces the Lord's own Resurrection (CCC 994), and it draws a careful line between them. Those raised before Easter returned to ordinary earthly life, and would die again, but Christ's Resurrection is entry into a life beyond death (CCC 646).
St Leo the Great saw in this scene the two natures of the one Christ: it does not belong to the same nature to weep with pity over a dead friend and to call him back to life with a word (Letter to Flavian, in substance). Our own Syriac tradition keeps this Saturday as the door to the Lord's Passion.
If Jesus knew he would raise Lazarus, why did he weep?
Because grief is real even where hope is certain. He weeps with Mary, and he weeps as a friend. His tears show that God does not stand at a distance from human sorrow. The Christian, too, may weep at a funeral without any lack of faith. Paul says we do not grieve “as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). He does not say we do not grieve.
Why does John say Lazarus had been dead four days?
It stresses that he was truly dead. Commentators often mention a later Jewish tradition that the soul stayed near the body for three days, so that by the fourth day all hope was gone. We cannot be sure how widely this was held in Jesus' time. In any case Martha's words about the stench say the same thing in plain terms (11:39).
Paul says the Son will be “subjected” to the Father. Is the Son less than the Father?
No. The Church confesses in the Creed that the Son is of one being with the Father. Fathers such as St Gregory of Nazianzus answered this very question in the fourth century, and they read the verse of Christ in his humanity and as head of his body (in substance). Paul's point is the end of the story: the Son, having conquered every enemy, hands over the Kingdom, and all creation rests in God.
For our Church, this Saturday stands between the close of the Great Fast and the entry of the Lord into Jerusalem. Tomorrow we bring palm leaves and flowers, and the Week of the Passion (Hasha) begins in the evening. The order is John's own. The crowd who come out with palms come partly because they have heard of this sign (John 12:18). Before we carry a palm tomorrow, it is good to stand today at this tomb, and to hear the call to come out.