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Fifth Sunday of Lent Year A
Buried dead men and even ruined stones cannot rise again. That’s the firm conviction and belief of the materialist communists, who reject any belief in God and dismiss anything religious and spiritual as pure superstition. In the year 1966, a platoon of Red Guards was ordered to destroy all remnants of the past including Christian cemeteries and tombs on the grounds of the Zhalan Catholic cemetery in Beijing. Most significant was the tomb of the famous Jesuit missionary, known by locals as the erudite Mr Li. He was Father Matteo Ricci SJ, the first Catholic priest permitted entry into the Forbidden City, where he spent the last nine years of his tireless and fruitful life and was honoured by the emperor himself with a tomb fit for a Mandarin.
Other memorials had been reduced to rubble, and the stones given to peasants to build with. The remains of the dead were simply scattered. Priests and nuns were forcefully conscripted for this laborious work of desecration, and they had to destroy the tombs with their own hands. But there was a shrewd lover of history at the Institute which trained communist officials. He didn’t want the relics to be ruined, not because he believed but was motivated by sentimental reasons. He came up with a brilliant proposal which was a subterfuge to save these stones. “Why don’t you just bury the stones,” he suggested, “and then order them not to rise again?”
After some time, when the horrible Cultural Revolution had passed and most people had forgotten the history of those buried stones, it was decided that they dig up these stones with little ceremony and fanfare to avoid unnecessary attention. So they did, and that’s why we still have Ricci’s tomb, dug out of the ground later on when the Communists changed their minds. Despite the order that they should remain buried, the stones of this tomb and that of two other Jesuits did “rise again”.
If dead stones can rise again from the rubble of destruction, so can men too. This is what we witness in today’s gospel. Martha and Mary had sent a message to the Lord by coming immediately to save their brother who was terminally ill. The Grim Reaper would not wait another day, but our Lord did. He waited another two days. In a seemingly nonchalant manner, our Lord declared that this illness is not unto death, but for the glory of God and His Son. Perhaps, these words would have been misunderstood by the sisters that Lazarus would recover from his illness and be saved from the brink of death. Can you imagine their disappointment with the Lord and His prophecy when Lazarus did succumb to his illness and die?
When our Lord finally arrived after deliberately delaying His departure by two days, He found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. One could argue that if the Lord had departed immediately upon receiving the news, it would have made little difference to the outcome. He would still have come too late. Martha, true to form, ran out to meet Jesus, while Mary, true to form, remained in the house.
Martha declares that if the Lord had been present, her brother would not have died, but that whatever Jesus asks of God, God will give it. The Lord, in response, declares to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. If anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (Jn 11:25-26) Here’s Martha’s moment of glory. John’s Gospel does not narrate Peter’s proclamation of faith: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Martha now has the honour of echoing Peter’s declaration: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God.”
If Martha displayed such brazen faith in the Lord despite her personal tragedy, Mary’s response seems more human and therefore, would resonate with most of us. She appears to question the Lord for His lateness. If only He had been there, this tragedy could have been evaded: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It is a human thing to grieve. It is quite natural of us to ask God or rather demand an answer from Him in the face of tragedy. Rather than being annoyed or angry at her seeming lack of faith in comparison to her sister’s, our Lord is moved by her response - her tears of grief and perhaps even anger.
Our Lord knew that in the end, life would reign, joy would outweigh the sorrow, and yet He grieved before performing that great miracle of miracles. He grieved for His beloved friend decaying in the tomb. And He grieved for us, I'd like to think, for all of humanity who must endure great trials, loss, abuse, injustice, as a result of our free will and fallenness - for us who, while on this earth, must fight hard and ceaselessly to believe in what cannot be seen, in a divine compassion we cannot fathom. He is grieving for the destruction that has been wrought by sin, death itself, which is not part of God’s original plan. Save for sin, death has no place in our universe. The wages of sin is death as St Paul points out.
Some people console us by trying to make us accept death as a natural part of human life. Others argue that death is merely a portal to eternity. But our Lord saw death as the enemy. His Father had never intended for us to experience it. In fact, He forbade Adam and Eve only one thing – a fruit that would make them subject to it. Death came into the world through the envy of the devil and the disobedience of man, not through the plan of God. So, in the presence of those wounded by death’s sting, our Lord weeps.
I guess it is always so irresistibly easier to surrender to the power of despair and thus be authors of our own spiritual and psychological death. Despair is the most lethal weapon at the hands of the enemies of Christianity. The Communists who ordered the destruction of the Christian graves and commandeered the religious leaders to undertake this heinous task with their own hands thought that they could bury the faith of the people as they did with the stones from the tombs of their heroes. But just as the stones did not remain buried, the faith of the Catholics continues to endure and indeed have grown despite years of persecution, oppression and governmental control.
When you're exhausted, from day after day battling doubts, struggling against the current, resisting the urge to lie down and allow the fear, resentment, selfishness, hatred to bury you alive, it is good to remember the story of Lazarus and the tomb of Matteo Ricci. The story of Lazarus reinforces our hope – a hope which does not lie in finding an answer to the mystery of our suffering, a hope that is not grounded in a final solution to life’s troubles, but a shining hope in the life of the resurrection – a rebirth – of how even the dead, the seemingly lost can be called forth, they can be liberated from the bindings of sin, desperation and grief, and be finally set free to live not just a dream, but the reality of immortality, never to suffer pain or death again. If the communists could not keep the tomb stones and the faith of the Chinese Catholics buried, if tombs could not keep Lazarus and Jesus dead, we too profess with firm conviction “in the resurrection of the body,” that God will ensure that not only our immortal souls will live on after death, but that even our "mortal body" will “rise again”.
Fourth Sunday of Lent Year A
The popular adage “it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness” may seem to be a cliched expression, a naive suggestion to put on rose-coloured glasses and pretend that all the messiness in this world do not exist. But like all other cliches, there is always a certain modicum of truth in this. All Malaysians should understand this - that we have a cultural tendency to complain and gripe about all and sundry. From politics to economics, from school to work, from food to accommodations, from church to family. Even though there may be a basis in reality to all our grievances, we seem to be blind to anything which is good. And though we may at times admit the good, we choose to minimise its value, “good just isn’t good enough”, and then proceed to exaggerate the negative side of things.
In our lengthy gospel for today, we encounter various characters who have a blinkered vision of life. From our Lord’s disciples who see the blindness of the man born blind as punishment from God, to the neighbours of the man who cannot accept the reality that things have changed for the better, to the Pharisees who only see the healing as a violation of the Sabbath prohibition, to his own parents who are more worried about public opinion than to rejoice that their son’s vision has now been restored. None of them are able to see anything positive about this astounding miracle of our Lord. Only the blind man could have a valid excuse. It is obvious that he couldn’t see because he’s physically blind and yet at the end of the story, he is able to initially recognise Christ as a prophet and then as the mysterious messianic figure of “the Son of Man”. In fact, it is this blind man who makes this profound confession of faith long before Thomas does at the end of the gospel: “Lord, I believe”, and then proceeds to “worship” the Lord.
Perhaps, what is needed is the ability to see as God does. As God had to remind Samuel when he seemed to have overlooked David, the youngest son of Jesse, because he was considered to be the most unlikely candidate due to his youthful age and physical weakness, “God does not see as man sees: man looks at appearances but the Lord looks at the heart.” This statement has less to do with the irrelevance of appearances than it has to do with the reminder that our judgments on any matter should go much deeper than superficial appearances. Samuel saw the runt of the lot, but God saw in David a hero who will slay giants. Samuel saw his physical weakness, God saw his spiritual potential for greatness.
That too is a choice set before us. Just as the way of seeing is a choice we must make, joy too is a conscious, chosen response to God's grace and hope, despite the surrounding, often difficult, circumstances. We can rejoice in the face of our struggle with sins and sufferings because these painful realities are not the final word. We can rejoice because though we were born with original sin, just like the man in the gospel was born blind, there is One who can and has removed the scales from the eyes of all those who believe in Him. We can rejoice though we may be considered weak, others see us as weak, but in Christ we are strong, in Him we can overcome the greatest obstacle before us. We rejoice because we were blinded by sin, but now our Lord has given new sight through faith. So it is not naive to believe in this: “it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” We rejoice because as St Paul reminds us in the second reading, we were once in darkness, but now we are children of the light.
Third Sunday of Lent Year A
As humans, we are naturally wired to blame other people or external circumstances when things don't quite go according to plan. Malaysians are particularly adept at this. In fact, the blame culture can be best summarised by using the mnemonic ABC - that is, A for accusing, B for blaming and C for complaining. But where do they spring from? All three find their genesis in a feeling that we suffer from - a deficit of love. An old priest mentor once told me, “Michael, there are no troublemakers, only people wanting to be loved!” When we do not feel sufficiently loved, affirmed or receive constant approval from others, a gaping hole opens up within us, a hole that sucks in all the light and then regurgitates the darkness by accusing, blaming and complaining about others whom we believe have left us in this state.
Today, the first reading provides us with an example of what happens when our lives are not marked by gratitude, it is immediately replaced with complaining and grumbling. Following their exodus from Egypt, the Israelites frequently grumbled against God and Moses due to lack of water and food, often blaming Moses for bringing them out of Egypt to die. That’s quite rich because they were crying out to God for assistance and liberation while they were languishing in slavery. And now that God had liberated them, they continued to turn their fury and discontent at Moses and indirectly at God. Ultimately, they were questioning God’s Providence and promise that He will lead them safely to the Promised Land.
We read this and are appalled and shocked at their sudden amnesia and lack of gratitude. But how often do we act the same way? As long as things are going well, we are grateful. But the second our situation changes (for the worse), we doubt, we fret, we grow anxious, we complain, we blame God for our predicament and then we accuse Him of not being caring enough for us. Sure, He has helped in the past, we think (if we even remember). But where is He now? “Is the Lord with us, or not?” the Israelites asked, as they quarreled among themselves.
Should we have any doubt that God loves us, St Paul reassures us of God’s undying love for us even though we had not merited it: “what proves that God loves us is that Christ died for us while we were still sinners.” So, in truth, we do not really suffer from a deficit of love. We cannot complain that no one loves us. Even if the whole world turns their back on us, which is a little over dramatic if I must say, God has never abandoned us. There is no doubt – God loves us and He has proven that love by sending us His Son who died on the cross for us!
Yes, deep down inside of us is this yearning to be loved, understood and accepted by someone. We try our best to please the people around us in order to gain their love and acceptance. We try to fill that emptiness that constantly gnaws at our soul. Over the years we will come to realise that no amount of possessions, friends or power will be able to satisfy this thirst and hunger of ours. There is only one thing that can satisfy that thirst – it is God’s love. In the timeless words of St Augustine, “Thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” Therefore this thirst, this yearning, this desire, this longing is not a mere human reality. It is put there by God as a reminder of His desire to share His own life with us and to symbolise the Christian’s longing to be with God forever.
If in the Old Testament God showed His care for His people by giving them water in the arid desert, our Lord in today’s Gospel promises a far greater source of water – living water that surges up from the depths of our being, water that can be accessed without the use of a bucket, i.e. human ingenuity and machination.
The story tells of two thirsty persons who meet at a well. Jesus, sweaty, weary, thirsty, comes to the well with a parched throat. The Samaritan woman, on the other hand, came to the well with a parched soul. Unlike the woman, Jesus has no bucket and the well is deep. The reason for this was not just an oversight on His part, a passing traveller. The reason for this was that He had not come to quench His thirst, but hers. He is the fountain of living water that has come to quench the thirst of the world; our thirst for God. The Samaritan woman’s thirst for love and for salvation was more profound than His physical thirst for water. That is why she had been married five times and now lives with someone who is not her husband. She sought fulfillment and meaning in the arms of a mate. She drank from the well of relationships – a well that continued to run dry because void of Christ and self-worth, these relationships could not meet her inner longing. She came at noon to draw water because she would have wanted to avoid the gossip of the other women in town. She was both the subject and object of accusations, blame and complaints.
Christ offered her the living water of the Holy Spirit—the only thing that would quench her spiritual and emotional thirst. Only God can satisfy our every hunger and thirst. Only God’s love can reassure us that we are precious and worthy of love. In the eyes of her fellow townspeople, she was a sinner beyond redemption. But not so in God’s eyes. Our Lord promises her, a sinner and an outcast, the water of life – God’s love and forgiveness.
Many of us continue to live like the Samaritan woman, gazing into the dark depths of the well of our hearts, wondering if we could find happiness therein or just emptiness. Many believe that it is just a dry well which serves only as an echo chamber of our ABCs, our accusations, our blames and our complaints - it’s always someone else’s fault, there is always someone else to be blamed, there is always something unsatisfactory which justifies our complaint. Or we could look up from our navel for once and look at the One who looks back at us with love and compassion. If we can recognise His love for us, then our accusations would be transformed into praise, our blaming would be turned into repentance and our complaints would be replaced with gratitude.
Just like the Elect who are gathered here today, you have been thirsting for the life giving water that can blunt the blade of every accusation, deflect the blows of every blame hurled at you and satisfy every complaint that you may ever had in your life. Jesus promises each and every one of you the water of life. If you drink of this water, you will never be thirsty again. If you have experienced the unconditional love of God, you will no longer crave for other lesser substitutes. Cease your search for other wells; they will all run dry. You have found the source of Living Water, where you will thirst no more.
