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Newsletter 6th April 2014
The gripping drama of the rising of Lazarus points towards Jesus as the Lord of Life and prepares us for the celebration of our sharing in His Life at Easter.
But this Gospel is more than this. It is a call for to consider if we are in a tomb, and if so, it asks us to hear the voice of the Lord calling us to shore up our courage and to come out of the tomb. The Gospel calls us to walk to the Lord.
We often get involved in things that are negative, nasty, sinful. We tell others that we are happy with this life. We try to convince ourselves that we are happy with our lives. But we have a difficult time looking into the mirror. We have an even more difficult time walking into a church. And we have a horrible time taking God inside of us, or simply sitting before Him in the Blessed Sacrament.
Jesus is calling us. We are all Lazarus’s. He is calling us to come out of the darkness, and come into His Light. He is calling us to come out of the place of death and come into His Life. In his second book on Jesus, Pope Benedict XVI points out that the early Christians referred to themselves as The Living. That is what we are called to be, alive in an otherwise dead world.
So, we ask ourselves today, “Am I happy with myself? Am I comfortable with my life? Am I happy with my relationship with God?”
Lent may be winding down, but there is still time for us to receive the sacrament of penance. There is still time left for our Lenten Spring cleaning. There is still time for us to be at peace with ourselves and with our Lord.
We ask God today for the courage to walk away from that which is killing us and to walk towards the Light. We ask the Lord for the courage to walk towards the voice that is saying, “Lazarus, Come out!”