Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast, where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the Word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: The Lord be with you and with your spirit. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. Glory to you, O Lord.
The sisters of Lazarus sent word to Jesus saying, master, the one you love is ill.
When Jesus heard this, he said, this illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God that the Son of God may be glorified through it.
Now, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
So when he heard that he was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was.
Then after this, he said to his disciples, let us go back to Judea.
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.
When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him, but Mary sat at home.
Martha said to Jesus, lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.
Jesus said to her, your brother will rise.
Martha said, I know he will rise.
The Resurrection. On the last day, Jesus told her, I am the resurrection and the life.
Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live.
And whoever lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this?
She said to him, yes, Lord, I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.
He became perturbed and deeply troubled and said, where have you laid him?
They said to him, sir, come and see.
And Jesus wept.
So the Jews said, see how much he loved him.
But some of them said, could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?
So Jesus, perturbed again came to the tomb.
It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.
Jesus said, take away the stone.
Martha, the dead man's sister, said to him, lord, by now there will be a stench. He has been dead for four days.
Jesus said to her, did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?
So they took away the stone.
And Jesus raised his eyes and said, father, I thank you for hearing me.
I know that you always hear me.
But because of the crowd here, I have said this that they may believe that you sent me.
And when he had said this, he cried out in a loud voice, lazarus, come out.
The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands.
And his face was wrapped in a cloth.
So Jesus said to them, untie him and let him go.
Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ.
Reminding ourselves that each of the Gospels can be viewed as a portrait of Jesus.
And portraits always emphasize certain aspects of an individual.
And John's Gospel, unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke, tends to emphasize more than the others Jesus divine side.
So the Jesus of John's Gospel is always knowing, sometimes almost performs for the people who are there.
Like I know that you always hear me, but I've said this for the crowd gathered here as an example and de emphasizes Jesus humanity.
Which is why for me, if I had to pick my favorite gospel, John would not be it.
That doesn't mean I don't see great wealth in John's Gospel. But for me, the strongest thing that the gospels do for my faith is remind me of Jesus humanity and how he overcame those things that we face on a day to day basis and how he felt the emotions and the struggles that we go through.
Well, of all of John's Gospel, this particular passage does show a bit of Jesus humanity, but not in the way that jumps right out at us.
If you listen closely, you heard the word perturbed a few times.
And most of us use the word perturbed to basically say annoyed or sometimes angry.
But that's not what the word means here.
When it says Jesus was perturbed, it really means something much deeper than that.
He was shaken to his very core.
Why was that?
Because while also being there to support and love Martha and Mary and grieving his friend, he was also starting to see the reality that his own life was going to be pretty short.
That in following where he was led, in trusting in the Father and in speaking truth when people didn't want to hear it, he knew that the end was close.
And when it says he was perturbed, we can see his humanity because guess what's going on there? He's scared, he's shaken by what's to come.
Not just a fear of death, which is a very human way of being by the way, but also fear of the suffering that he knew was coming.
Well, that's a very human thing as well. And each one of us, especially as we get older, start to think about those kind of things, to think about our ever approaching death, which there's not one of us getting out of here alive, so we know it includes us.
But also how will that death be. Will it be sudden or will it be lingering?
Will it be painful or not?
And because those emotions and those feelings are so very human and they're okay to acknowledge, we can take them to Jesus.
We can bring them to our prayer.
We can bring them to our life of faith, knowing that, guess what? He fully understands because he's been through it.
And I find that immensely comforting. So when I have struggles, when I have fears, I can lean on him to get me through those struggles and fears.
Remembering that I've said to you several times before, but it's important that to remember that the opposite of faith isn't doubt. Doubt creeps into all of our lives. It's okay because in doubt, Christ can enter in and strengthen us.
The opposite is actually certainty.
Because when we think we've got it all figured out, when we know how things are going to be, we don't need them anymore.
It's all on us.
So when you struggle as you get older, as we all do with looking at our own mortality, and it brings about perhaps being a bit perturbed, take it to Christ and know that he understands and that he wants us to be comforted by his presence and his love.
