Lazarus: The Night of Spirit

Where is Lazarus? Did Martha in her anxiety send him out to a store for some supplies? Was he upstairs sleeping? There is not a word about him in this incident, though he was part of the household. Sometimes what the Scriptures do not say is more revealing than what they do say. Lazarus' place in the family emerges as a kind of mystery. Jesus had a word of wisdom for Martha to help her in her difficulties. He also had a word of wisdom for Mary to help her to advance. When Jesus said, "Mary has chosen the better part," was he not inviting her to pursue the best part? Thus, he was encouraging her to still greater self-surrender and trust. But there is no word of wisdom for Lazarus.

Lazarus represents not only silence but disappearance. In the Gospel of John we find out that Lazarus was suffering from a serious illness. When he becomes deathly ill, the sisters send a message to Jesus saying, "Master, the one whom you love is sick" (John 11:3). Notice the delicacy of concern that this letter communicates. It was just a statement of fact. It was not a request for a cure. It was as if they had written, "Dear Lord, here is the problem. Do what you think best." Of course, they ardently hoped that Jesus would come and cure their brother. But Jesus does not come. He deliberately waits four days. Finally he acknowledged to the disciples, "Lazarus is dead. . . . Now let us go to him! " Thus, he who cured thousands of others declined to make any effort to save the life of his special friend!

How are we to understand Jesus' apparent indifference? What grief and despair did Lazarus feel in his last hours, knowing that Jesus could have come and did not come? This divine action challenges our idea of God, our idea of Jesus Christ, our idea of the spiritual life. Surrender to the unknown marks the great transitions of the spiritual journey. On the brink of each new breakthrough there is a crisis of trust and of love.

When Jesus finally arrived at Bethany, Martha typically hurried out to meet him. Mary stayed in the house. Notice this further delicacy of love. Mary waited until she was called. Martha's prayer for Lazarus accomplished nothing. She returns to the house and whispers to Mary, "The Master is here and is calling for you." Immediately Mary rises and goes to meet him.

When Mary reaches the outskirts of town where Jesus has paused, she offers exactly the same prayer that Martha made: "Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died." Again, this is not so much a request as a statement of fact. Then Mary weeps. Jesus, seeing her tears, breaks down and bursts into tears. Tears are a most effective form of petitionary prayer. Jesus immediately enters the town and walks straight to the tomb of Lazarus. After praying to the Father, he calls out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth!" That was the word of wisdom that Jesus had reserved for this supreme moment. The text reads, "And Lazarus came forth, his hands and feet bound in strips of burial cloth, and his face covered by a cloth. Jesus says to them, 'Free him and let him go.' "

What was the mysterious illness from which Lazarus suffered and died? It was the death of his false self. Death is the only cure for the false self. That is why Jesus did not come. Only the death of the false self brings liberation from the drives for survival and security, affection and esteem, and power and control, and from overidentification with a particular group or role. By overidentification with a particular group, I refer to the fact that from the ages of four to eight we tend to interiorize unquestioningly the values of our parents, ethnic group, nation, religion, peer group, television, and the Internet. We may never come to reevaluate them unless we are challenged by tragedy, illness, or some earthshaking event.

Jesus, through the inspirations of the Holy Spirit and the events of daily life, speaks to us everyday, asking us the same questions that he addressed to his disciples in the Gospels: "What is your motive? Why are you anxious? Why are you fearful?" We gradually learn to recognize influences that come from our emotional programs for happiness, our temperamental biases, cultural prejudices, genetic make-up, and all that opposes our embracing the full scope of Gospel values.

Lazarus, then, is a paradigm of Christian transformation. The spiritual meaning of Lazarus for us is that we cannot enter into the transforming union (or heaven) with our false selves. Lazarus in the tomb represents someone in the Night of Spirit who feels imprisoned, forgotten by God, and abandoned by loved ones. Lazarus shows us that the Christian journey is not a magic carpet to bliss, a career, or a success story. It is a series of humiliations of the false self. Divine wisdom works both in prayer and action to free us from the undigested emotional junk of a lifetime that is warehoused in the body. I have called this process of healing the "divine therapy." To make use of this term, I do not intend to bypass the traditional paradigm of friendship with Christ. The term simply adds a note that might be useful in contemporary society, especially in the West where psychological language has become almost the same as street language. The term "divine therapy" includes the great discovery by Freud about a hundred years ago of the unconscious dimension of the human psyche. Although the unconscious was intuited in times past by a number of great mystics, especially by St. John of the Cross, it was never clearly articulated or understood. Its significance for the spiritual journey is immense and crucial.

If we read John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul from the perspective of the unconscious, a remarkable light is shed on his extraordinary teaching. The Night of Spirit feels like dying. But it isn't death. It is liberation from the tyranny of the false self. It is the necessary preparation for the full transmission of divine light, life, and love. Lazarus as a symbol of Christian transformation is very close to us, and indeed is us in moments of deep purification, especially when that experience is prolonged and we feel as though there is no hope that the night will ever end. The Night of Spirit in particular is extremely searching. The Divine Therapist lovingly moderates the intensity of self-knowledge according to our state of life and capacity. Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus is only beginning the contemplative journey. Contemplation is not the reward of virtue. It is a necessity for virtue. It leads to the experience of the presence of God in pure faith. God then withdraws the divine presence, seeming to abandon us in the tomb, as it were. God returns at the appropriate time to call us forth from our darkness, confinement, loneliness, dereliction, and grief.

Jesus' loud cry ordering Lazarus to come forth from the tomb was the word of wisdom Jesus saved for him. Notice the progression that takes place as Lazarus comes forth from his entombment. He staggers to the door wrapped in burial cloths. Jesus orders, "Untie him and let him go." These words signal another stage of spiritual development. When one has emerged from the Night of Spirit, one has still to allow the Holy Spirit to work its fruits into all of one's faculties and relationships.

Every time there is significant growth in our spiritual development all our relationships change--to God, to ourselves, to other people, and to all creation. We become a new person, as did Mary of Bethany at the feet of Jesus. From this arises a new kind of activity which might be called "contemplative service." Contemplative service is service that comes from the experience of the divine indwelling from the Spirit living and at work within us. It is God in us serving God in others.

The divine indwelling is the doctrine that God dwells within us; hence, there is no place to go to find God. We just have to stop running away. Mary was not only assimilating God's words, she was becoming the Word of God. Each of us as a Christian is another "word-made-flesh," called to manifest Jesus Christ in our time, to our friends, family, and the people with whom we work. That is what brings the Gospel to life and builds the Christian community. The Christian community is where Jesus is experienced as a living reality. It is where people are struggling to move through the traditional stages of the spiritual journey and are supported by the presence, example, and wisdom of like-minded companions or soul-friends.

The Banquet at Bethany: The Outpouring of Love

After the spiritual awakening of Lazarus symbolized by his resurrection from the tomb, he appears at a banquet in Simon the Leper's house (John 12:1-8). The banquet is a symbol of the celebration of the divine nuptials in someone who has moved through the trials of the Night of Spirit to the spiritual marriage, from self-centeredness to Christ-centeredness.

The account of this event manifests the deep penetration of the mystery of Christ by the author of John's Gospel. The dinner included Mary the contemplative, Martha the activist, Matthew the tax collector, Judas the thief, Simon the Leper, and Lazarus the ex-corpse. A typical Sunday congregation!

The banquet took place six days before the Passover. "Jesus was in the home of Simon the leper at Bethany. While he reclined at table a woman with an alabaster flask of pure and very costly nard perfume entered the room" (Mark 14:3-9). All eyes were fixed on her. The "very costly perfume" was the equivalent of a working man's pay for a whole year. Mary stands next to Jesus and empties the entire contents of the alabaster jar over his head! Jesus is saturated with the delicious odor as it "billowed throughout the house."

Mary's extraordinary action brought the dinner to a screeching halt. It ended all conversation. The guests could scarcely breathe, let alone eat. Everywhere was the smell of this exotic perfume. The apostles did not know what to do or say. When they finally began to get their wits together, they grumbled, "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?" We are told that Judas was the spearhead of this criticism. Notice there is no comment from Lazarus. He is just present, watching all that is going on. Jesus then defends Mary: "Let her alone. She has done this in anticipation of my burial."

Let us try to grasp the significance of Mary's gesture. For her, Jesus' body was the alabaster jar filled with the priceless perfume of the Holy Spirit. His body was to be broken so that the fullness of the Holy Spirit dwelling in him might be poured out over humanity. Just as Mary's perfume filled the whole house, the unction of the Holy Spirit, present in the precious blood of Jesus, was about to be poured out for the salvation of the world.

Mary seems to have anticipated the immense tragedy that was about to happen to Jesus in Jerusalem. For one thing she wanted to do something to show that Jesus was no ordinary guest. In the Palestinian culture, ordinary guests were anointed with oil, their feet were washed, and they were given a kiss. Such were the normal courtesies. By her act, she was affirming, "This is no ordinary guest! This is the one in whom the fullness of the Spirit of God dwells." The only way the Spirit could be fully communicated was to destroy the container. Hence, in the fervor of her grace, "she broke it," according to the text. The gesture of anointing someone was a sign of love. There was no doubt that Mary loved Jesus and that the perfume signified the gift of herself. What touched Jesus was the totality of her gift. Mary had reached the point where she could surrender herself to Jesus just as she was and all that she was.

Here we are at the heart of the mystery of Christianity. This is why Jesus said, "What this woman has done must be preached everywhere in the world wherever the Gospel is preached." Jesus is about to do on the cross what God the Father does for all eternity. The Father totally gives himself to his Son, transferring to him the entire riches of the godhead. What Jesus Christ did in his sacrifice on the cross was to manifest the total self-emptying of the Father, revealing in this way the inner nature of the Trinity. As the Father pours himself totally into the Son, so the Son returns all he has received to the Father. At the same time he empties himself of his divine prerogatives to become a member of the human family, even to dying on the cross.

Mary of Bethany was inspired by the Holy Spirit to express her boundless love in this dramatic and total way. In doing so, she anticipated in her own person the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. At the same time she manifested the unfolding of the contemplative path in all its fullness. Contemplation is not only prayer but action as well. And not only prayer and action, but the gift of one's inmost being and all that one is. We are to allow God to be God in us. Each of us is inherently capable of giving God that glory Hence, the incredible dignity of a human person.

Lazarus is not quoted during this event. Did he recognize from his own experience that Mary had also received the transmission of unconditional love? That is who God is, and that is who we are to become.

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Excerpted from The Better Part by Fr. Thomas Keating

You can obtain a copy by visiting the Contemplative Outreach Bookstore.