Chapter
18
by Fr. Thomas Keating
Lazarus: Symbol of Christian Awakening
Parts II - IV
Jesus was some where beyond the Jordan.
He received the sister's message, "Please, Lord, your dear friend is
ill," and to all appearances, ignored their humble plea. When questioned by
the other disciples about Lazarus, Jesus replied: "Lazarus, our friend, has
fallen asleep." Later he acknowledged the fact of his death to the
disciples in these words: "Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad
that I was not there so that you may believe. Come now, let us go to him."
When Jesus finally arrived at Bethany,
he was confronted with the actual situation to which he had allowed his friend
to sink. He heard the prayer of Martha and saw the tears of Mary. Her tears
caused his heart to melt and his eyes to stream with tears. His inmost being was
shaken. At Pentecost the house where the disciples gathered was shaken by a
mighty wind. This shaking of Jesus' inmost being was also a mighty movement of
the Spirit, who was about to fill the soul of Lazarus, just as he was later to
fill the house where the disciples were gathered.
Shaken by this deep emotion stirred up
by the Spirit, Jesus made his way to the tomb. "It was a cave and a huge
stone lay against the entrance. 'Remove the stone,' Jesus said.
"'Master,' Martha, the dead man's
sister, said to him, 'his body stinks by this time. He has been dead four
days.'" Her faith was beginning to waver. Jesus quickly came to Martha's
rescue with this magnificent promise: "Did I not tell you that if you have
faith, you will see the glory of God?" This glory is the fullness of
salvation.
Those who were present managed to get
the stone away from the front of the tomb. Then Jesus prayed to his Father. The
sublime work of re-creating a human being requires the cooperation of the Source
of all life. "Father, I thank you for listening to me. I know that you
always hear me, but I said it for the sake of the people surrounding me that
they might believe that you have really sent me."
Jesus experienced another powerful
movement of the Spirit within him and called out with a mighty voice,
foreshadowing his last great cry on Calvary: "Lazarus, come forth!"
Not, "Come out," but
"Come forth." Come forth from your old life, which is more like
death, to a life that is brand new. While the bystanders watched, "he who
had been dead four days staggered forth, wrapped hand and foot with winding
cloths, and with a bandage around his face."
Jesus said to them, "Unwrap him
and let him go!"
Everyone who has truly borne his own
sinfulness has borne the sinfulness of everyone else and the world is redeemed
again through him. He has died the most important death which is that of the
false self. When his physical death comes, it will be, like Christ's, a
redeeming death.
Everyone has a hard core
self-centeredness. This is symbolized by the heavy stone which sealed Lazarus
into his tomb. Once one has experienced the weight of this stone, it is
impossible to judge other people any more. One realizes too intimately the
crushing burden of weakness, ignorance, and sin, with which every member of the
human race is struggling.
Part III
Two
points in the story of Lazarus need to be emphasized: the consequences of
Lazarus' illness and death. The power of the prayer of Mary of Bethany whose
tears moved Jesus to raise her brother after four days in the grave, is
particularly striking, because it is precisely the raising of Lazarus that set
in motion the events which led to Jesus' crucifixion, and thus to the redemption
of the world. Martha went to Jesus and prayed; nothing happened. Mary went to
him saying the very same words, and he immediately came into the village and
worked the miracle. The raising of Lazarus is the event that settled the
Pharisees on the necessity of Jesus' death. All the events in the life of Jesus
are gathered up into the Church and preserved through the ages to be poured out
again and again as one generation succeeds another. Christ lives in the here and
now, especially in the sacraments of the Church, where he shares with us the
graces that are recorded in the gospel. Jesus could have brought on his passion
by other ways. But he chose to take the final step that would inevitably lead to
his death and to the redemption of the world through the prayers of this
woman--not by the action of any of the apostles.
This fact has to be
placed side by side with the consequences of Lazarus' illness and death. If he
had not accepted death, he could not have been raised from the dead at the
prayer of Mary of Bethany. Thus, the dying Lazarus possessed the same
significance and led to the same consequences as the prayer of Mary. Both are
revelations of the way things happen in the divine economy of salvation.
The
illness and death of Lazarus are reflected in the world today on an enormous
scale. The modern world lies under a pervasive sense of anguish, of being
abandoned by God, or at least experiencing him as absent. This sense of God's
absence is characterized by the loss of a sense of value in life itself and the
consequent loneliness, emptiness, and bewilderment that beset so many people
today. In the Western world we are living in what has been called the
post-Christian era. One has only to read a book like Malcolm X's life story to
realize what this means for countless numbers of people. Cultural changes keep
occurring with such frequency and urgency that few people can integrate them
into their own past experiences or into the traditions from which they come. Cut
off from its roots and abandoned to what seem to be uncontrolled forces of
political and social change, the post-modern world feels an increasing sense of
doom descending upon it.
This experience is bound to be reflected in
the Church. Christians will be called by God to enter into the agony of our
times and to be willing to share, though in a redemptive manner, in the same
psychological experience of alienation from God.
When Jesus at the
prayer of Mary raised Lazarus from the dead, many believed in him. Such is the
power of those who are willing to bear the consequences of sin at whatever
historical time they may live. In our time, the consequences of sin are
colossal. As the sense of alienation from God in the world today is very deep,
so also participation in this experience is bound to be very deep. Events that
seem to turn our lives upside down and inside out are part of God's redemptive
plan, not only for us, but for the world in which we live. God may be preparing
a great wakening for the world, if he can find enough people like Lazarus and
Mary to cooperate in his mysterious plan. Theirs is a special kind of poverty, a
poverty so intense that no word can describe it except death.
Part
IV
Lazarus is the image of the growing consciousness of
one's sinfulness ending in the death of the false self. All the way to this tomb
is a great grace; much more is coming out of it. All the way to this tomb is
also challenging to faith. If one enjoyed the assurance that Jesus was close, it
would not be much of an illness or much of a death. To be really effective, one
must feel the sense of God's absence; one's idea of God must be shattered. This
is the major symptom of the illness. Lazarus, as a dead man, was not aware of
all the action taking place outside the tomb. He did not know that there was a
great crowd of mourners gathered there and that Jesus had finally come, and just
how close Jesus was to him now.
The darkness, dampness, lack of air in
the burial chamber are all symbols of Lazarus' psychological state and inmost
feelings. The great stone sealing the tomb signifies his sense of being hemmed
in and imprisoned. What happens when the stone is rolled away?
Instantly
a shaft of light dissipates the darkness. No dawn is ever so welcome as after a
night spend in absolute darkness. A wave of fresh air pours in, freeing the tomb
from its suffocating stuffiness. Warmth enters the cave, drying up the damp
walls, tempering the chill. Lazarus begins to feel some relief from his terrible
sense of confinement. Hope breaks in upon him. His longing to be free increases.
His love for God is enkindled. But it is only the beginning--the first stirring
of divine life as he begins to awaken from the stupor of spiritual death.
Now
comes the strong cry of Jesus which Lazarus heard in his inmost being--a sound
that sent the walls of his inner prison crashing to the ground. To be called by
name, as Mary Magdalen was,66
is not so much to hear the voice of Christ with your ears as to know in your
inmost being, with invincible conviction, that God knows you inside and out--everything--and
still loves you! That is the information that everyone is longing to hear and to
have verified again and again! To be called by name takes place when God gives
the interior assurance that he loves you. This knowledge penetrates every part
of your being, body, soul, and spirit.
Lazarus
awakens to the full awareness of God's love for him as the Holy Spirit is poured
into his spirit by the strong shout of Jesus. He rises, leaving behind his
cramped, inadequate, merely human way of looking at things. His first
steps--because he was still bound hand and foot--could only be halting and
stumbling. The awakening to divine life does not normally take place in a single
moment, but gradually.
He
struggles to the mouth of the cave. His eyes meet those of Jesus. He waits there
to receive the embrace of him to whom he is already inwardly united.
Lazarus'
inner resurrection is not complete until the crowning grace is bestowed upon
him: "Unloose him and let him go!" He was standing at the mouth of the
tomb, "wrapped hand and foot, his face muffled with a scarf."
What
are we to understand by the unloosening? freedom from all that death and the
tomb stand for. His weakness is replaced by the virtues of Jesus, His spirit is
alive to every movement of the Spirit within him. He is led now, not by his own
human spirit but by the divine Spirit, who has take possession of all his
faculties.
Lazarus now enjoys
the freedom to experience all the fruits of the Spirit--charity, joy, peace and
the gifts of the spirit which lead to the beatitudes. Freedom to savor that love
which casts out all fear. Freedom to expand in boundless confidence in the
Father. Freedom to celebrate the nuptial banquet of divine union symbolized by
his presence at the supper at Simon the Leper's house. Freedom to run the way of
God's commandments Freedom to be his true self, to be the person that God made
him to be. Freedom to leap and dance and to celebrate the mystery of divine
life--and that perfectly human life, which is the divine life in us.
Footnote
66.
John 20:11ff. To Text
More information can be obtained by reading the
book Crisis of Faith/Crisis of Love by Fr. Thomas Keating. It is
offered in our
