Saturday in the Fifth Week of Lent: Ezekiel 37:21-28, John 11:45-56.
Today, the momentum gathering for Holy Week is palpable, both at home and in the daily readings. Tonight we sing first Vespers for Palm Sunday, and the antiphons will sing of the beginnings of the Passion. In today’s readings, we encounter Ezekiel’s first prophecy of Christ uniting the nations and then the gospel shows how the high priest Caiaphas unwittingly echoes this prophecy.
We should pay attention here: Caiaphas is a lesson in not using religious language to justify political moves.
The prophecy recorded in Ezekiel is this: “I will take the children of Israel from among the nations to which they have come, and gather them from all sides to bring them back to their land. I will make them one nation upon the land.” The promise of unification on their own land has been integral to the Jewish nation to this day, likely because of verses like this: “they shall live on it forever, they, and their children, and their children’s children, with my servant David their prince forever.” Theirs is a very literal interpretation of this promise, whereas Christians understand this to refer to the new Jerusalem, the Kingdom of God.
John attributes a similar prophetic voice to Caiaphas: “He did not say this on his own, but since he was high priest for that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not only for the nation, but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God.” The phrase he did not say this on his own is found throughout scriptures as a way to say that the Spirit of God is active in a person. It follows, then, that John would write that he prophesied.
Undoubtedly the same Holy Spirit revealed this to St. John as he wrote down the holy, inspired gospel. It is an interesting comment on the fact that God uses all parts of humanity in His plan of salvation. Caiaphas was, by all accounts, a highly political man and perhaps a tool of his influential father-in-law, Annas. Caiaphas was one of five men to serve as high priest who were either sons or sons in law-of Annas, who was high priest from A.D. 6-15 when the Romans had previously deposed him. So, God presents Caiaphas with the prophetic wisdom that Jesus is meant to gather into one the dispersed children of God. What Caiaphas does with this prophetic wisdom is another thing altogether.
The scene in the gospel is the convening of the Sanhedrin. We think of this as being a plot of a few bad apples, but historically the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, which met every day except the Sabbath, was comprised of 71 elders (priests and scribes). Their function was that of a supreme Jewish court, among other things. This was no small cabal of plotters. This was the primary body of respected Jews who held power in Jerusalem.
The Sanhedrin was undoubtedly central to the operation of the Jewish religious/social state, but since they were under Roman rule and the Roman procurator appointed the high priest, it was plagued with politics (and even accusations of members being collaborators with the Romans). This uneasy relationship with Rome, along with a Jewish populace that chafed at the thought of being subjugated, made those in the Sanhedrin politically jumpy to say the least.
John writes, “So the chief priests and the Pharisees convened the Sanhedrin and said, ‘What are we going to do? This man is performing many signs. If we leave him alone, all will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our land and our nation.’” This is a summary of what was likely some months of worrying and discussion that came to a head on this day. Their worry is that a Messiah who unites the people would be seen as a sign of revolt or instigation against their Roman rulers.
Note how divorced this is from what the common people (like the Apostles) felt and yearned for. The Apostles and other disciples of Jesus show us that the Messiah was more than a political figure. In fact, one couldn’t avoid the fact that Jesus tells them directly that the Kingdom he preached was “not of this world.” The people yearn for salvation and a relationship with God, or at least God’s Anointed One. These are upright intentions.
The Sanhedrin, on the other hand, displays none of this. They are stuck in their worldly concerns. In a way, its understandable, since we’ve seen leaders in most every culture prioritize political and territorial concerns over everything else. And yet this is Israel, of which God says “you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation,” (Ex 19:6). St. Peter writes something similar to the Jews living outside of the Holy Land in his first letter: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” (1 Peter 2:9). Is the Sanhedrin acting like it is a priestly kingdom or just another secular fiefdom?
John directly quotes Caiaphas as saying, “You know nothing, nor do you consider that it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish.” Caiaphas appears to be a man of determination. Perhaps the vision from the Holy Spirit of what Jesus means to the Jewish people has given him this confidence. But his utterly political perspective twists this prophetic knowledge to its own purposes.
If his compatriots know nothing, he thinks he knows something important, but all he does with this important knowledge is to make a cold military calculation: one life to save many. This is the arithmetic of death, of loss. He is ruled by worldly concerns.
Christ before Caiaphas (1308-1311), Duccio di Buoninsegna | Image from Wikiart.org.
This is an important lesson for how to live out our lives. If we are open to God, faithful to the spirit as well as the letter of the law, and cultivate love, then we can avoid misusing any wisdom that God grants us. Caiaphas has not grown in the Lord and has not cultivated a heart and mind that is receptive to God’s will. The only will we see present in his short speech is his own cold, calculating will that is preoccupied with earthly power relations.
Thank you, God, for an alternative way that you’ve given us in your Son, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Him.
Tuesday of the Fourth Week in Lent: Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12, John 5:1-16.
[COVID-19-era] It’s been over a year since we could attend Mass in our churches in a normal fashion. The exact experience differs from town to town, church to church. For some people, this has been quite upsetting while for others it’s a convenient excuse to stop going to something that interrupted their leisurely Sundays. Being Lent, it’s a good chance to reflect on our church experiences — what they mean to us, what they should mean to us.
Going to Church (1902), Pekka Halonen | Wikimedia Commons.
I grew up going to church every Sunday (bless my parents for that). “Blowing off” Mass was not an option. Thus, I came into adulthood with a strong sense of obligation when it comes to regular Mass attendance. But when you’re a young adult you have this existential moment when you realize that you don’t have to do things just because you always have or you feel obligated to. You can skip Mass and no one is around to make you feel guilty. This is an important moment — some experience it while still in their teens, others not until their 30s or later. This is important because we need to grow out of the habit of going to the church building to “endure” the Mass for an hour and grow into something deeper. We must find that it is something we do because we felt compelled to, from deep inside of ourselves as we respond to God’s call. Not because someone else is telling us we have to go. God wants us to respond personally to His invitation.
On the other side of this moment, when I feel so blessed to be part of the mystical Church, I look back on the great bugbear of Catholic obligation as an absurdity. I see how it served its purpose, especially for children who must be taught where the spiritual well resides so that they can access it throughout their lives, but if we allow our lifelong relationship to God to exist in the shadow of obligation, we risk never finding the Church despite all our church-going.
Don’t get me wrong — I think obligation has a very good place within the pantheon of attitudes that make up “fear of God” — but this is a reflection of our humble state in front of our Creator, not a motivation for religious practices like going to Mass or confession.
What does that church building mean to you? That question is at the forefront of our readings today. Ezekiel is shown how the temple is transformed in the New Jerusalem, and in the gospel reading, Jesus enters a ritualized, symbolized, and mythologized part of the great Temple in Jerusalem to establish a new call to humanity on the Sabbath, effectively reforming the temple from within. At the end of this reflection, we must ask ourselves if we have heard the scriptures and the Voice of God — do we conceive of our churches and our Church in the way he intends?
Ezekiel prophesies during the Babylonian Captivity, around the years 596-574 BC. Jerusalem and its great holy temple have been destroyed, which is a catastrophic symbolic and religious loss for the Jews. They collectively mourn, and Ezekiel can only dream of the great temple being rebuilt. Twenty-five years into their exile, God grants Ezekiel an extraordinary vision of the restored temple. The record of this vision covers 7 extensive chapters at the end of the Book of Ezekiel and details the dimensions and activities of the temple. Clearly, the Jewish traditions and laws surrounding religious worship still matter a great deal, but something else is going on, too. And it coalesces at the East Gate.
Ezekiel relates that at the East Gate, “the glory of the God of Israel was coming from the east; the sound was like the sound of mighty waters; and the earth shone with his glory.” Ezekiel falls on his face, and “As the glory of the Lord entered the temple by the gate facing east, the spirit lifted me up, and brought me into the inner court; and the glory of the Lord filled the temple” (Ez 43:2, 4-5). The East Gate, therefore is identified as the place where the Lord enters, and Ezekiel is commanded to keep it closed and locked except on the Sabbath, when the people come to encounter the Lord. The temple is made holy not by its height and girth and golden ornamentation, but by this connection to the presence of the Lord.
One of our Church Fathers, Origen, helps us understand Ezekiel’s vision of the east through the lens of Christ: “Atonement comes to you from the east. From the east comes the one whose name is Dayspring, he who is mediator between God and men. You are invited then to look always to the east: it is there that the sun of righteousness rises for you, it is there that the light is always being born for you” (Hom. 9, 5. 10: PG 12, 515. 523.).
The description of the restored temple finishes with today’s reading. In an extraordinary scene, Ezekiel sees beyond the temple walls. Flowing eastward from the temple is a stream of water that becomes deeper and deeper until it is a mighty river, too deep to cross. The river gives life to all around it: “Wherever the river flows, every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live.”
The vision is clear: the Lord, coming from the east, meets humanity in the temple at the altar, and from the temple flows forth a river of life — in the world and making its way back toward God in the east. This river of life happens as a consequence of the encounter within the temple, and is clearly an ecstatic vision of a transformed world. Nothing could be a more concise picture of the reality ushered in by Christ than this.
River in Saint-Clair (1908), Henri-Edmond Cross | Creative Commons, courtesy Wikiart.org.
The Jews recognized the incredible importance of the temple as the holy meeting place between them and God, but it seems as though the end of Ezekiel’s vision was not as firmly implanted. Jesus criticizes the Pharisees and scribes for only upholding the strictures of the laws and rituals but missing the point of how the temple encounter should transform how they relate with their fellow human beings outside of the temple. This aborted, truncated life in the Lord precipitates the need for the Son of God to be born into humanity, perfect the Lord’s teachings, and usher in a new way to encounter divinity that allows for the River of Life to eclipse the temple in importance.
At many points in Christ’s ministry, he tells us how he is establishing a new priesthood (with Peter and his apostles), a new sacrifice to replace all other ritual sacrifices (the Eucharist as initiated at the Last Supper), and a new direct communion with God and God’s love through himself. In fact, we hear echoes Ezekiel’s description of the temple gates when Jesus calls himself the gate for the sheep (cf. Jn 10:1-10). Most strikingly, he not only identifies himself with the temple, but being greater than the temple: “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. … For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath” (Mt 12:6, 8).
This brings us to the gospel reading, which happens at the Temple, on the Sabbath, at the Sheep Gate. This likely references the sheep market where people could buy sheep for sacrifice at the temple. There are also pools there, used to ritually wash the animals before they were used in the temple. “In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.”
A few things are being conveyed to us. First, Jesus is drawn to the place where the outcasts go in a bid to purify themselves like the sacrificial animals. (Jesus more than once calls humanity his sheep as he describes himself as the Good Shepherd — here that image is seen to be much more accurate in actual practice than we may have realized.) We see a desperation in these poor beings as they wait for a “stirring” of the waters by an angel whereby, according to common legend, the first one in the water is cleaned by divine action. We might be reminded of the story of the Canaanite woman begging for Christ’s mercy and healing: “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table” (Mt 15:27).
To sum up the deeply symbolic scene: at a place where animals are purified before being sacrificed to God, we encounter poor, wretched humans hoping for scraps of cleanliness to drop their way, by a singular, angelic stirring of the waters. They essentially have no dignity, no place in Jewish society. Contrast this with the great, flowing River of Life that Ezekiel sees pouring out from the temple, granting bounty to everything it touches. Clearly, the beatific vision is not being realized.
But then comes Christ.
Christ Healing the Sick at the Pool of Bethesda (c.1615-1620), Pedro Orrente | Wikimedia Commons.
Note the formula of God’s call and our response; this is his way. Jesus asks if the man wants to be well (pure, whole; the Greek word is hygiēs). The man laments that he cannot do it on his own, he needs help. Jesus’s response is beyond the man’s expectations or even understanding of what is possible, as is always the way with God’s overflowing love. Jesus says, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”
Like all of us, the man was so caught up in his thoughts of what he needed at the moment (which he had been doing for 38 years!), that he couldn’t imagine anything else to ask for. How many times have we been overwhelmed by our current concerns and worries that we only bring these trivialities to God to “solve” rather than asking to be made whole?
Let’s expand our focus and notice several other things happening here.
First, Jesus establishes a new, direct connection to healing in himself, something only available before through the extensive rituals of the temple. This is the miraculous change brought about by the Incarnation of divinity in human flesh. This is underscored by his instruction to “take up your mat,” which provides a temporary dwelling place for the man in the temple. That dwelling is no longer needed.
Second, he provides the divine energy personally to the man so that he can rise by himself and walk on his own. The river of life enables us to “bear fresh fruit” of our own. The man is enabled to be fully human, blossoming in the love of God.
Third, Jesus performs an act of healing on the Sabbath. The Jews, particularly the Pharisees and scribes, will use this act of “work” on the Sabbath to persecute and eventually arrest Jesus. It is a major theme of the gospels, and juxtaposes their hangups with particularities of the law while disregarding the presence of God among them.
But perhaps throughout the gospels, Jesus is intentionally healing on the Sabbath. Let’s return to the quote from Matthew: “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. … For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath” (Mt 12:6, 8). Christ is establishing in himself, here at the temple in today’s reading, what he says in that passage from Matthew. Here, in the temple, he does the “work” of replacing the temple through his own saving person and mission. As the Lord of the Sabbath, united with God to whom the sacrifice is being offered, he releases humanity from our ritual debt of sin offerings and atonement.
Origen emphasizes this wonderfully in terms of the liturgy:
“God taught the people of the old covenant how to celebrate the ritual offered to him in atonement for the sins of men. But you have come to Christ, the true high priest. Through his blood he has made God turn to you in mercy and has reconciled you with the Father. You must not think simply of ordinary blood but you must learn to recognize instead the blood of the Word. Listen to him as he tells you: This is my blood, which will be shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”
This brings us back to the questions that opened this reflection: what do our churches mean to us? Our churches are the center of our liturgical lives because that is where Christ instituted the sacramental remembrance of his own great sacrifice. No longer are animals needed for atonement as we encounter God because Jesus makes that sacrifice unnecessary.
But so much more! He gives himself continually, over and over, not just to the Father but to us, through his Word and his Body and Blood. He is the River of Life flowing from the altar, nourishing us and making the world whole and bountiful. He flows to the east, back to the Father, and has inaugurated the Church, his mystical Body, as his Bride in this journey to the Father.
Thus, our participation in the Church (both in the church building and in every other aspect of our lives) becomes much more than just “going to church”. It is the deepest spiritual encounter with God that certainly does not end when the priest announces “the Mass is over, go in peace.” The life of the Church is the liturgy. Liturgy is not confined to the hour or so of the Mass; instead the Mass is one of the greatest ways we celebrate the liturgy.
Detail from The Crucifixion (late 1400s), Andreas Pavias | Wikimedia Commons. St. John’s description of water and blood coming from the side of Christ when the centurion pierces his side with a spear is a good point of reflection. As we consider the River of Life in which we are baptized as Christians, this life-giving water finds its source alongside the Blood of our crucified Savior.
If what we miss about church in the time of pandemic is hanging out with other parishioners for doughnuts and coffee, perhaps we need to reconsider what our Church means. If what we miss most is the great music at Mass, perhaps we need to recall exactly what type of heavenly encounter is going on there and re-prioritize ourselves. We are united with saints and angels, the dead and the alive, in a way that is much more deep than discussion groups, charity drives, and parish dinners. These things are great, absolutely! But the Church is fundamentally something altogether different.
A Lenten prayer for today: may we all desire to encounter the River of Life throughout our day and cherish our moments within the Mass when we encounter the Word and Eucharist in a singularly spectacular way.
Fifth Sunday of Lent: Ezekiel 37:12-14, Romans 8:8-11, John 11:1-45.
Resurrection. Each one of today’s readings discusses resurrection. The gospel presents us with the last of Jesus’s great signs in St. John’s gospel, the raising of Lazarus from the dead. We must ask ourselves: what do the prophets and Jesus have to say about death and overcoming death?
Through the mouths of prophets in the Old Testament, God promises us a triumph over death. Because he speaks to us through analogy, millennia of commentators juggle the importance of the literal resurrection of the body, the salvific resurrection at the final judgment, and a more fundamental aspect of the triumph of the Spirit.
What we hear in today’s reading seems to be not just a spiritual triumph, but a bodily triumph. Ezekiel says: “O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them.” He also says, “I will put my spirit in you that you may live, and I will settle you upon your land,” so the body and spirit are essential in this triumph over death. We clearly hear that bodies will rise from graves, and the Spirit of the Lord will be put into them.
The full context of this scene in Ezekiel, chapter 37, is that the Lord whisks Ezekiel off to a valley filled with “very dry” bones, people who were clearly dead for a long time. The Lord tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones and they will become people again. When Ezekiel follows his commands, they become more than just animated skeletons: “suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them.”
Then, the Lord prompts Ezekiel to ask for the breath of life to fill them, “and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.”
Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones (1866), Gustave Doré | Wikimedia Commons.
So Ezekiel prophesies about the full resurrection, body and spirit, but the Lord also makes a point that this is a metaphor for the life of faith here among his Chosen People: “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’”
Remember that Ezekiel was a prophet during the Babylonian Exile, when the Jews were cut off from the “land of milk and honey,” where Moses had established their lands. So when Ezekiel says in today’s reading, “I will open your graves and have you rise from them, and bring you back to the land of Israel,” he is speaking of a literal return of the nation back to the land of Israel.
Yet as Christians, we understand that the Word of God speaking through the prophets is the same Word of God that becomes incarnate in Jesus Christ. Thus we understand Ezekiel’s words through the lens of Christ as well; he establishes the new Jerusalem as the Kingdom of God and himself as the new temple. To rise bodily from the graves of the exiled Jewish people and be brought back “to the land of Israel” is to find life in the hundreds of millions of believers who make up the Church, the Body of Christ.
Consistent throughout these levels of meaning — bodily and spiritual resurrection, Jewish nation and Christian Church — is how God’s will is opposed to death. The essence of God is the opposite of death. It is the generative spirit of life.
St. Paul speaks of this in today’s reading, telling the Romans that the Spirit, the Person of the Trinity through Whom Christ was raised from the dead, constantly gives us this power of life. He says, “If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit dwelling in you.”
We must dig deep to understand the spiritual wisdom of St. Paul. Filled with the Spirit himself, he is describing a new way of being, one which dispels a preoccupation with death. Before Christ, humanity was so preoccupied with death as the inevitable fact of existence that it ruled their minds, determined their actions, and “deadened” their souls (and continues to do so for those outside of Christianity). Paul’s consistent message in his epistles is that Christ changed all of this. By rising from the dead — moreso, by placing the divine and immortal God into a mortal human form and having that particular human’s selfless sacrifice so overpower death in significance — death need no longer dominate our lives.
God came to us in love and gave us his Spirit to dwell within us! He writes, “if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness.” Death, for St. Paul, is more of an accidental aspect of our bodies and fleshly desires than it is a finality. The only finality that matters to St. Paul is the unconquerable, generative life given to us by God.
This is the point Jesus attempts to make by raising Lazarus from the dead. While this is the greatest of his miracles in the gospels, it seems that the triumph of the sign he gives might be marred by uncomprehending minds. Don’t get me wrong, there is much cause for rejoicing in this gospel reading, but if we follow Christ’s words and reactions closely, we see that John is saying something about the reception of his message.
St. John gives us a number of clues in this chapter that what Jesus intends is flying over the heads of those with him. John signals the importance of Christ’s message at the beginning of the chapter: Jesus says, “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.” The point, in other words, is “the glory of God,” not how awful death is.
And so we hear the curious logic: “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.” What type of healer would stay put when he hears that a loved one is ill? An earthly healer bound in mind and spirit to the finality of death would run to their aid immediately. But Jesus, that is, God Incarnate, operates differently. His plan is to show his love for Lazarus and his sisters by opening their eyes to the fact that death isn’t the real finality. Or at least he will try to have them see this point.
Resurrection of Lazarus (6th century), mosaic in Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy | Wikimedia Commons.
Several times he tries to tell his apostles that he’s going to wake Lazarus from his sleep. They first miss the point by saying “Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.” As if Jesus needs a reminder of the final judgment and salvation of the righteous!
Why does Jesus say “sleep”? If we try to understand the world through his eyes, death is just sleep by another name — it does not hold the same frightening finality and inexorable dread that it does for us.
Jesus tries to be more direct. “Lazarus has died. And I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him.” Then, the sad Eeyore that is Thomas says gloomily, “Let us also go to die with him.” I can just imagine the suppressed eye roll from Jesus at this weird misunderstanding of his words, as if they were going to emotionally “die” with Lazarus while sitting shiva with Lazarus’s sisters. Jesus’s message will continue to be clouded by this emotional response we have to death.
We commonly associate Martha and Mary with the famous episode in St. Luke’s gospel when they welcome him into their house for a meal. Years of sermons have impressed upon us that Martha represents the busy believer who is caught up in the rituals of service while not basking in the Spirit right in front of her. Mary represents the opposite: choosing to bask in his presence and let other tasks slide. But this isn’t Luke’s gospel. Here, St. John perhaps gives us a reverse picture: if anything, Martha is closer to appropriately accepting Christ and what he signifies than Mary is.
First clue: Martha comes to meet Jesus outside of town “but Mary sat at home.” Martha says that if Christ had been there Lazarus would not have died. Many have tried to read some type of chastisement in this statement, but I’m not sure the context supports it. She immediately follows this statement with a profession of faith that God will answer any of Jesus’s prayers. The sum of her statements seems like she laments that he was not there but respects his power and authority. Jesus tells her that Lazarus will rise, and her response is similar to the apostles’: “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus patiently responds with one of the more memorable lines from the gospels: “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus accomplishes much, theologically speaking, in this response. First, he takes her belief in the resurrection and makes it immanent in his presence. It is now, not later. Second, he blows up our traditional understanding of death and life. How can someone live “even if he dies”? How can a person of faith “never die”? Let’s recall that Jesus first refers to death as “sleep”. It does not hold the finality that we give it. In this passage, he is saying that the life he gives is way more substantial and significant than this sleep we call death. Plus, in him this life is here now; we need not wait until the last day.
Martha seems to get it. He asks her if she believes and she proclaims that she does. She adds, “I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” Does she understand the true implications of his coming? Perhaps so! This proclamation of faith is on the order of the famous one that Peter gives him after his difficult teaching about eating his Body and drinking his Blood in order to have eternal life.
The Raising of Lazarus (c.1616), Jusepe de Ribera, lo Spagnoletto | courtesy Museo del Prado.
Mary, however, is another story. Martha encourages her to get out of her self-absorbed sorrow and go to see the Lord. When she does, Mary is a blubbering puddle of emotion: “she fell at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’” This is all she says as she and her companions take to weeping. She is absorbed in herself, in her belief that death holds a significant finality for Lazarus and all of us.
Jesus’s reaction is interesting and has, in my mind, been regularly misinterpreted. There is an issue with translation. Our lectionary says “he became perturbed and deeply troubled,” while the NRSV Bible says, “he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved,” and the Douay-Rheims Bible says that he “groaned in the spirit, and troubled himself.” What’s the verb here?
In the original Greek, it is ἐνεβριμήσατο (enebrimēsato), which literally invokes snorting like a horse. It means “to be greatly fretted or agitated; an expression of indignation” [The Analytical Greek Lexicon, p. 134]. The verb shows that his indignation was internal. The second verb phrase, ἐτάραξεν ἑαυτόν (etaraxen heauton) means “agitated (or troubled) himself.” So, this being perturbed and troubled is clearly directed inwardly. Why?
He asks them where Lazarus has been laid and after they say, “Come and see.” Then the shortest of verses (verse 35): Ἐδάκρυσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς. Jesus wept. The verb, a form of dakruo, means a quiet, silent weeping, and is only used for Jesus in the entire New Testament. Some of the people note his weeping as a sign of how much he cared while others grumble about the fact that he should have done something to keep Lazarus from dying. At this, Jesus becomes internally perturbed/indignant again (embrimōmenos).
What do we make of these different emotional states of Jesus? First deeply internally agitated, then silent weeping, then internally agitated again? Fr. George Corrigan, OFM writes online the following analysis:
Two interpretations of embrimaomai in 11:33 have been suggested. First, Jesus was ‘perturbed’ with compassion for Mary when he saw her weeping, and second, that he was ‘perturbed’ with anger. It is hard to linguistically justify the sense of “compassion.” Anger is more consistent with the word’s meaning. In the latter case there have been a number of suggestions why he was angry: (1) he was angry because of the faithless weeping and wailing of Mary and ‘the Jews’—they were grieving, as St Paul said, ‘like the rest of men, who have no hope’ (1 Thess. 4:13); (2) he was angry with death itself, the consequence of sin, which caused such pain; (3) he was angry with himself for not coming sooner to heal Lazarus and so prevent his death and the grief it caused Mary and Martha. This last suggestion is unlikely because Jesus knew he was going to raise Lazarus from death. The first suggestion has most to commend it, because the text says it was when Jesus saw Mary weeping like the rest that he became perturbed…but we often rebel at that interpretation.
I tend to agree with Fr. Corrigan here, although I would say that “anger” isn’t quite the term I would use. Even though the Greek points to the perturbance being internal, I don’t think Christ was angry with himself. This would imply that he did something wrong, something that he regrets, and we learn especially in the gospel according to St. John that he was fully God, in control, and purposeful in all of his actions. Remember, he intentionally waited to come to visit and said that Lazarus’s state was “for the glory of God.” There is a plan here.
I also don’t think that he’s angry with death and the associated homilies that paint this whole episode in the rhetoric of war — that Christ is doing battle with death. That perspective gives too much power and authority to death, the exact opposite of what Christ is trying to get us to understand. He calls death “sleep;” he is neither scared nor intimidated by death. He states matter-of-factly: “Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him.” As if waking someone from a dream. Easy-peasy. His whole point is that we are held under the sway and the spell of death and he has something so much more powerful and significant for us. This isn’t battle, this is swatting away the fly. It is the sizzling away of the water droplet in the awesome purifying presence of God.
The Raising of Lazarus (c.1630), Rembrandt | Wikimedia Commons.
So, we are left with the first option that Fr. Corrigan presents (or maybe other options that the Word of God is waiting to plant in our hearts after fruitful contemplation). There might be an internal perturbation because Jesus is seeing the sad necessity of his Passion and death, which is coming next in the gospel. Is this a frustration with Mary and the weepers? Maybe. Perhaps it’s a frustration with the state of humanity, so captive to the thrall of death that they can’t see the alternative even when God is present with them. After all, Luke tells us he also weeps over Jersualem and their pigheadedness in not accepting him.
The weeping and the internal agitation are not so opposite (at least one scholar has been so afield as to suggest that Jesus was bipolar!). In my mind, the agitation is the power of God surging passionately in him, a gut-like reaction to the thrall of death he finds in humanity. The silent weeping is his humanity, also fully present in him, and it is sandwiched between these surges of embrimaomai to remind us that our love and emotion comes from God and returns to God. The surges of embrimaomai embrace our human affections in a power that is not from humanity; it is from God and it agitates to release us from the thrall of death.
So, I’d replace “anger” in this examination of the passage with a “gut-like surge, the passion of God’s rejection of death.”
As we finish the gospel reading, we see that even after they have come to the tomb and Jesus asks them to roll back the stone, Martha, the one who seems closest to believing and understanding him, balks, saying that there will be a stench. He replies, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?”
We hear no more about a stench, even when Lazarus comes out of the tomb. The glory of God wipes out everything that we think we know to be true. No stench, no death, no laws of physics and biology hold sway in the face of God. Jesus emphasizes this fact when he says, “Untie him and let him go.” It’s his beloved Lazarus, whom he just raised from the dead, and does he rush over to hug him and cry tears of joy with him? No. He reinforces his message that we are slaves to our perception that death holds finality over us by saying “untie” and “let go.”
This is the New Moses, leading his people out of slavery in a new and much more radical way.
Astonishingly, even at this, we hear that “many of the Jews” who saw this “began to believe in him.” WHAT? Not everyone was ready to throw down their belongings and follow him at that moment?? Are you kidding me? Perhaps this is what Jesus saw when he wept his silent tears. No amount of work in his mission while alive can convince the people of God’s radical descent to create a new reality outside of death for them.
It will take his own death and Resurrection for people to see the Glory of God.
The Raising of Lazarus (Opwekking van Lazarus), 1631, Jan Lievens | Wikimedia Commons.
Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Lent: Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12, John 5:1-16.
Water figures strongly in today’s readings. Water is the great bringer of spiritual purification and cleanliness. God’s law prescribed that Jews must ritually purify themselves in water before partaking in everything from meals to sacrifice before the Lord. Water is also the substance of physical life, sustaining humans and all of creation.
We reflected at length on the connection between the life-giving and spiritual-purifying aspects of water as presented to us in the story of Jesus at Jacob’s well with the Samaritan woman (see If You Knew the Gift!). Today, we see how water figures in prophecy about the Kingdom of God, specifically in the person of Jesus Christ.
Ezekiel, writes during the Babylonian Captivity around the years 596-574 BC, like the events found in the Book of Daniel. Ezekiel is given prophetic visions from the Lord about both the destruction of Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the temple. Remember that the temple in Jerusalem was the heart of the Jewish faith, where the presence of God dwells. It had supreme importance for them, and the destruction of the temple along with all of Jerusalem was a catastrophic event. Thus, when we hear of a rebuilt temple, we must understand that this is a restored connection with the presence of God.
Solomon Dedicates the Temple at Jerusalem (c.1896-1902), James Tissot or followers | Wikimedia Commons.
Today’s reading is part of Ezekiel’s vision of the restored temple; an angel shows him “water flowing out from beneath the threshold of the temple toward the east,” which is the direction that the temple faces. The angel takes him away from the temple and the water builds and deepens, first into a stream and then into a mighty river. In the east, it reveals its life-giving nature, it “empties into the sea, the salt waters, which it makes fresh. Wherever the river flows, every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live.”
This type of imagery should be familiar to us. We have explored how Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that he provides “life-giving water.” It is the endless river of life flowing from the Trinity, the “self-opening of our Thrice-Holy God,” as Fr. Jean Corbon, OP puts it. The river in Ezekiel’s vision, therefore, we can understand as the same river of life that St. John will see in the heavenly Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation. This is the eschatological vision of the river: the life abounding in the river is everlasting life.
In this eschatological vein, let’s examine the importance of the direction of the east that Ezekiel takes great pains to emphasize. One of our Church Fathers, Origen, explains why the direction of the east is important to us:
“Atonement comes to you from the east. From the east comes the one whose name is Dayspring, he who is mediator between God and men. You are invited then to look always to the east: it is there that the sun of righteousness rises for you, it is there that the light is always being born for you. You are never to walk in darkness; the great and final day is not to enfold you in darkness” (Hom. 9, 5. 10: PG 12, 515. 523.).
For centuries, this is why Catholic churches have been built with the altar facing the east. We worship in the direction of Christ, the “sun of righteousness” rising for us, where “light is always being born” for us.
This brings us to the physical nexus of Ezekiel’s vision. Recall that he is describing the temple. The saving nature of the river, deep and wide in the east, points to the sacred nature of the temple. Since the river starts in the temple, our experience of divinity starts in the temple. This building (like our Catholic churches) is important because it is our physical place where we encounter God.
In Christ, though, the physical and the divine co-exist. This changes everything, and even while Ezekiel was a devout proponent of all kinds of traditional Jewish religious prescriptions, his mystical vision inexorably points to a new temple that is nothing the traditional Jewish faith could envision. God is presenting him with a vision of the new temple in the person of Christ.
River in Saint-Clair (1908), Henri-Edmond Cross | Creative Commons, courtesy Wikiart.org. How can we imagine the divine river of life? This work of pointillism stimulates my imagination.
At many points in Christ’s ministry, he tells us how he is establishing a new priesthood (with Peter and his apostles), a new sacrifice to replace all other ritual sacrifices (the Eucharist as initiated at the Last Supper), and a new direct communion with God through himself. Most strikingly, he not only identifies himself with the temple, but being greater than the temple: “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. … For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath” (Mt 12:6, 8).
He is not abolishing physical buildings for worship, but he is re-defining the symbolic and religious meaning that the Jews placed on Jerusalem’s temple. This is most evident when the temple shroud is ripped in half and the earth shakes when he dies on the Cross. Brent Pitre, PhD, explains the importance of these events: “with the tearing of the Temple veil and the earthquake—the whole universe, ‘heaven and earth,’ were symbolically being torn asunder” (Jesus, the New Temple, and the New Priesthood, p.63). Again, with Jesus being the physical union of divinity and humanity, everything changed.
Pitre’s article referenced above is a great academic deep-dive into the implications of Jesus replacing the Jewish concept of the temple in Jerusalem. He traces the depth of the temple in Jewish consciousness: “From a theological and liturgical perspective, for a first-century Jew, the Temple was at least four things: (1) the dwelling-place of God on earth; (2) a microcosm of heaven and earth; (3) the sole place of sacrificial worship; (4) the place of the sacrificial priesthood” (48). It’s worth a read if you’re interested in exploring this further, and it certainly underscores the radical nature of Christ’s message for the Jewish people.
One last item to note from Ezekiel’s vision: the fruit born by the trees growing on the banks of the river has a life beyond the river. He says, “Every month they shall bear fresh fruit, for they shall be watered by the flow from the sanctuary. Their fruit shall serve for food, and their leaves for medicine.”
As we have explored in previous reflections, Jesus counsels us in discerning between good and bad prophets, “by their fruits you will know them” (Mt 7:20). The idea is that the fruit reveals the heart of the person: “every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit” (Mt 7:15). Thus, when Ezekiel tells us that the fruit growing on the banks of the river of life “shall serve for food and their leaves for medicine,” the Word of God is telling us that those who are fed by this divine river will be transformed in goodness, in turn feeding and healing those in the world. This is the action of God’s mercy and agape as he works his will through us.
Turning to today’s gospel reading, we find the incarnate Word of God in Jerusalem for a Jewish feast day and he is by the Sheep Gate. This likely references the sheep market where people could buy sheep for sacrifice at the temple. There are also pools there, presumably used to ritually wash the animals before they were used in the temple. “In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.”
A few things are being conveyed to us. First, Jesus is drawn to the place where the outcasts go in a bid to purify themselves like the sacrificial animals. More than simply outcasts, they were spiritually unclean in the Jewish mind. They exhibit a certain desperation in waiting for a “stirring” of the waters by an angel whereby the first one in the water is cleaned by divine action. We might be reminded of the story of the Canaanite woman begging for Christ’s mercy and healing: “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table” (Mt 15:27).
But here there is even deeper symbolism because this is the temple, these are waters meant to be used for purification in order to give sacrifices to the Lord. When Jesus asks the paralytic “Do you want to be well?” the man answers pitiably, “I have no one to put me into the pool.” He does not ask the Lord to heal him, for he does not recognize who he might be. He simply laments his predicament. Despite his pitiful state, the man has undiminished hope and faith, having been ill for 38 years.
Christ Healing the Sick at the Pool of Bethesda (c.1615-1620), Pedro Orrente | Wikimedia Commons.
Given the logic of healing stories, we might expect that Jesus will be the one to “put him into the pool,” perhaps after first asking for his faith in God. But that’s not what happens. Jesus has something deeper to say and do. He instead says, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”
Several things happen here. First, Jesus cuts through the ritual nature of the temple, displayed in this outlying washing pool for sacrificial animals and the infirm where the first one in the pool gets healed. He establishes a new, direct connection to healing in himself. This is underscored by his instruction to “take up your mat,” which provides a temporary dwelling place for the man in the temple. That dwelling is no longer needed.
Second, he provides the divine energy personally to the man so that he can rise by himself and walk on his own. The river of life enables us to “bear fresh fruit” of our own. The man is enabled to be fully human, blossoming in the love of God.
Third, Jesus performs an act of healing on the Sabbath. The Jews, particularly the Pharisees and scribes, will use this act of “work” on the Sabbath to persecute and eventually arrest Jesus. It is a major theme of the gospels, and juxtaposes their hangups with particularities of the law while disregarding the Spirit of God among them.
But have you ever wondered that Jesus might be intentionally healing on the Sabbath, not just doing his ministry as if it were any other day? Let’s return to the quote from Matthew I referenced earlier: “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. … For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath” (Mt 12:6, 8). Christ is establishing in himself, here at the temple in today’s reading, what he says in that passage from Matthew. Here, in the temple, he does the “work” of replacing the temple through his own saving person and mission. As the Lord of the Sabbath, united with God to whom the sacrifice is being offered, he releases humanity from our ritual debt of sin offerings and atonement.
In yesterday’s Office of Readings, we read the account from Leviticus on the complicated ritual for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, with all of its purifications, sacrifices, and sprinkles of blood. Notably, one lamb was to be sacrificed to God while the other was to have all of the Jews’ sins cast upon its head and released into the desert as an offering to Azazel (a fallen angel, much like Satan). In today’s readings, we encounter sheep at the Sheep Gate — literal sheep, the infirm who are the pitiful sheep lost to their people, and the Lamb of God Himself. The Lamb of God replaces all of these sacrificial sheep and he saves those lost sheep.
Christ Healing the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda (1667-1670), Bartolomé Esteban Murillo | Creative Commons, courtesy The National Gallery (UK).
Yesterday’s Office of the Readings also gives us Origen’s commentary (quoted earlier). Here is another important link from Origen:
“God taught the people of the old covenant how to celebrate the ritual offered to him in atonement for the sins of men. But you have come to Christ, the true high priest. Through his blood he has made God turn to you in mercy and has reconciled you with the Father. You must not think simply of ordinary blood but you must learn to recognize instead the blood of the Word. Listen to him as he tells you: This is my blood, which will be shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.“
Once again, we encounter Christ in all his fullness today, enacting his saving mission with every word and deed. We must strive to see the mystery hidden deep within each passage from the Word of God. Jesus gives us a profound understanding of the water that flows from the new temple: it is him, it restores our humanity and enables a new communion with the divine.
Friday in the First Week of Lent: Ezekiel 18:21-28, Matthew 5:20-26.
Today’s readings are very much concerned with what is central to a person, as opposed to the actions they take on the surface. First from the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel and then from the mouth of the Lord Himself, we hear how God wants a relationship with authentically upright and loving people.
Ezekiel writes in a particularly difficult time for the Jewish nation, in between the multiple sackings of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, when the Jews were forcibly exiled in waves. They must have been wondering what they did to deserve this, and he spends a section of Chapter 18, just prior to today’s reading, adjusting the common notion of being punished by God for your own father’s sins. God speaks through Ezekiel: “Know that all lives are mine; the life of the parent as well as the life of the child is mine: it is only the person who sins that shall die” (Ez 18:4).
Today’s reading is a continuation of this theme of being personally responsibile for one’s sins, and it reflects back for the listener some truths about God Himself. We hear that God welcomes the repentant person: “If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed, if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just, he shall surely live, he shall not die.” It is God’s great message of hope that anyone can live in the light, united with Him if he or she repents and lives according to His statutes. One’s past does not matter as much as the state of one’s heart and soul in the present.
Study for the Head of Saint Charles Borommeo (1658-1690), Carlo Maratta | Creative Commons, courtesy the Barber Institute of Fine Arts/ArtUK.
Ezekiel affirms the opposite, that an otherwise virtuous person will die if he or she turns to wickedness. This is undoubtedly less-than-good news, especially for people who might believe their final judgment is weighed “in the balance.” God states unequivocally that it’s not an average of one’s lifetime of goodness vs. wickedness: “None of his virtuous deeds shall be remembered, because he has broken faith and committed sin; because of this, he shall die.”
While this may not seem fair to those who subscribe to the “I mostly do things right” camp of salvation, God is telling us that he wants us to be authentically converted to him. He points out that if we’ve turned away from him and embrace wickedness, we have taken ourselves out of the light, we have accepted death over life. “When someone virtuous turns away from virtue to commit iniquity, and dies, it is because of the iniquity he committed that he must die.” It is our action of turning away that has, in effect, killed us.
In Matthew’s gospel reading, Jesus elaborates on God’s desire to have us turn to him in heart and soul, with the very core of our being. He begins by doubling down on adherence to the law: “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.” These fastidious practitioners of Jewish law — who could hope to be more righteous than them? To clarify what he means, Jesus says that while the law forbids murder, “whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.”
And so we get to the meat of the matter. It’s not just adherence to the outward details of the law, but adherence to the spirit of the law as well that makes one righteous. Jesus is pointing out that being angry with someone carries the same intent as murder. Our anger puts us in a position of opposing that person to such an extent that we wish to enact some type of violence — a verbal insult, public scorn, physical violence, etc. Each of these reflects an attitude of hate, not love, where we no longer consider that person a brother or sister but an enemy or an opponent. In this state of anger, we no longer abide by the spirit of the law. Murder is an extreme physical manifestation of the same spiritual low point.
His next example is similar. Jewish law made it punishable to be judged by the Sanhedrin for saying the epithet “Raqa” (essentially, “I spit at you”) to someone. Christ counters “whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna.” This seemingly lesser crime contains within it the same seed of spiritual decay, however. The Greek word that Matthew records Jesus using is Μωρέ, which is also aptly translated as “idiot” (it is the root of the English word “moron”). To call someone a fool or idiot discounts them completely as someone with dignity. More than that, we are denying our brotherhood with them, denying their equal status given to them by God. Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection was accomplished for all of humanity. Through this earth-shattering event, he dwells in each of us. Thus, when we discount another person by calling them fool or idiot, we are discounting Christ as well. A grievous sin, indeed!
Fr. Simeon Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, PhD, states this clearly in his three-volume masterpiece on the gospel of St. Matthew, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: “Who am I to raise myself exaltedly above another and confine that child of God and brother of mine to the category of human debris?” (221). Central to our understanding is that God’s Law describes outward markers of actions that stem from a deeply planted spiritual truth. The deeply planted truth is that we are undeservedly loved by the origin of love Himself, who wants us to share this heavenly love with all of his creation. Everything stems from that, and the “spirit of the law” is how deeply this spiritual truth orients the core of our being. Our actions (which show whether we adhere to the “letter” of the law) are, in effect, the fruits of either a healthy spirit dwelling with God or an unhealthy spirit obsessed with self and dwelling with the devil.
Science and Charity (1897), Pablo Picasso | Creative Commons, courtesy WikiArt.org
We must be careful not to simplify and misunderstand Jesus’s message to be “the spirit of the law is more important than the letter of the law.” Leiva-Merikakis states that the spirit is an “overabundance,” not a different/better thing: “If he is asking his followers to surpass the ‘justice’ of the Pharisees and Doctors of the Law, this ‘surpassing’ is an overabundance that transcends the Law interiorly, that deepens the sense of the Law and traces it back to its very source in the will and Heart of God … [transcending] in the sense of going deeper into it: an interior transcendence.” (216-217).
The last words of Jesus presented in today’s gospel relate an urgency to keep our deeply planted spiritual truth healthy and in front of our own eyes. He says, “leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother.” We must not attempt to offer sacrifice to God, our ultimate display of obedience and honor, if we are dishonoring him by arguing with or discounting another child of God. We would be hypocrites, pretending to give ourselves to Him while at the same time being in a state of pushing Him away.
Both readings today, therefore, display how God wants us to convert to him, fully and unreservedly. It’s easy for us to be tempted to sin and be out of grace, covering up that deep spiritual truth God has planted in us. But that’s why Lent is so important, so that prayer, fasting, and almsgiving can help us fight temptations and remain close to God, anxious to meet him face-to-face.
As a final note on the passage from St. Matthew’s gospel and a plug for Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis’s amazing three-volume set, revel for a moment in his command of language and excellence as a scholar. Below is a more extended excerpt from the first volume of Fire of Mercy on today’s reading.
There is a subtle progression in the verbs used by the Lord in these three verses (5:21-23). Just as his doctrine is proceeding from external to the interior, from the past to the present, and from the general to the particular, so too his language. He first addresses the crowd as such in the plural: “All of you have heard.” He then singles out individuals from the group before him, but somewhat hypothetically: “Whoever might say….” Finally, he completes his approach to the human heart and conscience of the specific person standing before him by using the second person singular: “When thou are taking….” Matthew’s scenography here is full of visual dramatic impact. We can see Jesus first looking over the whole crowd on the mountainside and then gradually beginning to move in on individuals, who are transfixed by the penetrating goodness of his eyes. In the end, the merely curious individual who found himself in the crowd just “to see” can no longer hide, for he feels Jesus address him, and no one else, with his words and glances.
“When you are bringing your gift-offering to the altar.” The material gift offered to God to fulfill a ritual prescription suddenly becomes the symbol of the human heart, which is the real gift the external sacrifice intends in authentic religion. But the pious rite that is to be transacted between the individual and his God cannot be completed if the memory (μνησθῇς) of a rift with one’s brother intervenes. On the way to the altar, the gift must be dropped; not a minute more can pass; reconciliation cannot be left for later. The impediment to sacrifice, and hence to right relationship with God in worship — what had been objectified as ritual impurity before the coming of Christ — now becomes the impediment of the memory, of the consciousness of disharmony with one’s brother. You cannot present your heart to God as a gift-offering on the altar of sacrifice (θυσιαστήριον) if that heart is turned against God’s other children (222-223).
