Fifth Sunday of Lent, A March 29, 2020
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
Video of Mass: https://www.facebook.com/stjohnjtown/videos/1430435507117449/
Perhaps you, like me, are starting to get tired of just how well these readings line up with our bizarre situation. I don’t really want to keep preaching about the Coronavirus, but I can’t seem to escape it. The Gospel keeps setting up the topic too perfectly. Like today. A gospel about a sick man who dies. Really, Jesus? The whole world is dealing with sickness and death right now – can’t you just give us something positive to think about, something lighthearted to take our minds off the difficulty? But it’s the 5th Sunday of Lent, so we have to talk about Lazarus. I simply cannot preach about this gospel without mentioning the Coronavirus. The decision is out of my hands.
And that’s just it. The decision is out of all our hands. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Both Martha and Mary say this, and it shows their abundant faith. But it was out of their hands. Jesus wasn’t there and they couldn’t do anything about it.
How would they have reacted, I wonder, if they knew just why Jesus didn’t make it in time? The Gospel tells us that when Jesus “heard that he was ill remained for two days in the place where he was.” He did it on purpose. He let Lazarus die because “he loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” He even tells his disciples “I am glad for you that I was not there.”
Isn’t that a bit cruel, Jesus, to be glad that you let your friend die? If that is God’s idea of love, are we so sure we want that? As with so many things in the spiritual life, the answer to that question is not some new piece of information, but a change in perspective. The answer to the question “how can a good God let bad things happen” is to learn to ask a different question. “How is the good God at work in the midst of our suffering? What greater good is He preparing to bring from this?”
There is still a human reality here, though. No one should read this and conclude that we simply abandon infected people to their fate. And it is sad. Jesus, who let Lazarus die on purpose, still cries when it happens. It hurts him to do what love tells him he has to do. The human reality does not change the divine one. Like breaking a bone that set incorrectly, divine love has to break our humanity in order to fix it.
That’s the mystery of the Cross, that grace transforms suffering into a channel of grace and glorification. But there is something else at work here. Everyone suffers – and in some sense deserves it – because of sin. But there is the greater paradox that those who sin less, those who are holier, tend to suffer even more. Jesus healed other people when he forgave their sins – a sign of why they suffered at all. But Jesus loves Lazarus, so he lets him suffer even more.
And God does it to the saints throughout history. St. Teresa of Avila, after falling from her cart into the mud, heard God say, “see how I treat my friends,” to which she responded, “no wonder you have so few of them!” Padre Pio once suffered a pretty brutal attack from some demons. Since he could see and talk to his Guardian angel, he was angry with the angel for letting it happen. After his complaint, the angel responded, “Give thanks to Jesus that He treats you as one chosen to follow Him closely up the ascent to Calvary… Jesus permits these assaults of the devil, because His (Divine) pity endears you to Himself, and He wants to make you like unto Himself in the anguish of the desert, of the Garden and of the Cross.” He even said, “Do you think that I would be as happy if I did not see you so thrashed?”
Happy to see you thrashed… This mysterious conformity to the Cross, this extra share in suffering, is a hallmark of being especially chosen by God. If we understood the gift of God, we would not only stop fearing this, we would desire it like Padre Pio’s angel. Not that we should think this is something we can control. Neither Teresa of Avila nor Padre Pio chose these visions and they did not earn them. But they did accept them with faith. And the greater glory that came from their greater trials is evident.
It’s out of our hands. Why does Jesus heal the sick child, but let Lazarus die? Even now, there are Christian missionaries curing blindness and raising the dead around the world, yet how many devout souls do we know who languish under all sorts of ailments? Who die and stay dead? Why does Jesus sometimes rush to our bedside or sometimes wait to let our trial run its course? I don’t know.
Well, that’s not true. I know one thing, that the answer is the same in both cases. Love. I don’t always understand that love, but I believe it. Those who suffer greatly are tempted to think God does not love them because he lets them suffer. This is not true, as we see with Lazarus. Or there are those who, like me, do not suffer much and so wonder if they are missing out on the extra helping, the better portion given to those who suffer for God’s love.
But these are pitfalls. God’s ways are inscrutable. What we do know is that he loves and how he treats us is always a facet of that love. It is right and just to ask, to pray for healing – Jesus does not scold Mary or Martha for their desire that he be healed, and we know he often said yes to similar prayers. How he answers our prayers is a mystery of his love. Our acceptance of that love, our return of our own life and love is our decision, but that is the response, not the initiation.
I’m tired of preaching about this pandemic, but I know in my heart that this is a sign to the world of just how little we control. It is a unique and peculiar form of suffering – to be virtually connected but physically disconnected; To have such power and ingenuity and yet find it so impotent in the face of a microscopic organism. There is a human reality here. We are suffering and we are right to mourn it. But do not forget the divine reality: that God’s love is at work in ways we do not understand. That, for him, death ends with greater life.
If he answers our prayer, if he delivers us from illness and death, praise be to God. But, if our sickness is like the sickness of Lazarus – an extra share of suffering to mark the extraordinary expression of God’s love – then we must see what God is doing and begin to believe all the more.