Please click here for a printable PDF version of this document.    

I am going to ask three questions. There is no need for a show of hands. They are rhetorical questions. The first one is “Has anyone you know and loved died recently? And, if so, could you put that person’s face in your imagination?”

Back on the east coast they call them “wakes.” Here, on the west coast, they call them “vigils.” Every so often Father asks me if I can go to a vigil, or a wake. You know, I am sure, the deceased is usually in an open casket and people who love the deceased and friends are there, usually the evening before the funeral Mass. And, if it is a Catholic setting, they invite a priest who says a few words and maybe says part of a rosary. Back on the east coast, when I was the priest who went to the wake, I would often read the gospel you just heard and, not too long into it, I would begin to see the acronym “MEGO” take place, (“My Eyes Glaze Over.”) because it is a long gospel and, if it were a Catholic setting, the people would say, as I do, “I have heard that so many times” and “The priest has to do that” and “It’s nice some people believe that.”

And yet, Father Raymond Brown, this great Catholic Bible Scholar, under whom I was lucky enough to study a few years back, has called this gospel “The Turning Point!” And I love anything dramatic! .... The turning point! It was the turning point in Our Lord’s life because it was his last miracle. It was his greatest miracle. And, when you read a little farther along in that gospel, some of the people began to believe in Him. ... I mean, really, at last! Lazarus is alive. Some people began to believe in Our Lord. But the others, if you read a little farther on, decide “He’s got to go! This Jesus is getting too much publicity. Now, he has worked some kind of magic act. We’ve got to kill him!” It was the turning point.

What I would like to do is, with the three questions, make three points that struck me when I read these six Catholic Bible Scholars about today’s gospel, the turning point. I would like to divide it into “scholarly treatings” and “heaven’s gate greetings,” the scholars approach to the three points I liked, and then what you and I might say when we meet people after death.

And that’s not Walt Disney and it is not a fairy tale we tell children. Unless we will live forever with a risen body like Christ, let’s go to breakfast. It’s that essential! It’s not “Oh, my eyes glaze over...” We WILL live forever. We will meet people we loved who have died. That’s Christ’s promise, not some Pope..... Our Lord! “I will raise you up on the last day.” And he proved it.

So, number 1, the first scholarly point that struck me was that, the irony of the whole thing, the irony. Here Our Lord brings somebody back to life and, at that turning point, some people start to believe in Our Lord at last and others, his enemies, say “He’s got to die.” He brings a man to life and now he, himself, Jesus has got to die! And, within a few days, they were already plotting his death. This happened just a little while before the crucifixion.

OK. The heavenly greeting, the greeting at heaven’s gate. (I want to use mine for this one. The other two, I am going to use adults’. Quite a distinction! But the first one, I want to use mine.) When I meet her face to face at the Last Judgment, (Her name is Patricia.) I am going to say to her at last, “I have been in love with you (Not “I love you” which is so banal.) since 1948, a long time to carry a torch. On some level, I am still in love with you, Patsy Collins, who broke my heart in 1948. We know it’s silly, but I can’t wait to do it!

Number 2, the rhetorical question I would like to ask, “Did anyone whom you love take a long time to die?” I remember Pope John XXIII, when I was a young priest, took so many weeks to die and the whole world loved him. Anyhow, is there anyone whom you loved who took a long time to die? When she or he finally did die and go to God, you felt a kind of reprieve and then you felt guilt because you felt the reprieve. But you shouldn’t feel guilt because they have been reprieved from long-delaying pain, and because you loved, the pain you were going through. Can you see such a person in your life who took a long time to die and that delay brought so much pain? OK, that person in your head now....

The scholars say, “Why did Jesus Christ take four days? It was two miles away. He gets notice, “Your friend Lazarus....” (And he did love Lazarus and his two sisters, Martha and Mary. Our Lord did. He loved them.) Lazarus is dying and Our Lord stays right where he is..... Lazarus is dying!... And Our Lord stays there. When he finally arrives, Martha says, (When I was a kid I used to think Martha said this, “If you had been here my brother would not have died.” Uh- Uh! ) .... “If you had BEEN here, (angry voice!) we fed you and housed you and your twelve buddies, he wouldn’t have died!” Don’t you think that’s so much more human? He loved Jesus and here Lazarus has died, and he’s done all these other wonderful things. Delay, delay, what a test of our faith! Praying and holding on and praying.... And Our Lord loved these people. He had known them for three years, and he delayed! Why did he delay? He doesn’t really explain too clearly. Maybe so he can finally work this wonderful thing that we won’t get discouraged when he delays us. That’s not a bad reason, on Planet Earth. Hang on, through the delay, as Martha and Mary did. Martha getting good and mad as we can.

And the greeting... When I taught adult education to parents for eight years in the evening, adult education.... I love teaching adults, and when I taught this particular gospel, I have on index cards right what they would say, these adult parents of kids in the Catholic School. What would you say to someone whom you loved, one of the things you would say to someone you loved who died, when you see them again. You know, the most index cards (and I still have them) had something like this: “I am finally able to say I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I never said it in time. I never said it fully enough. I did not take your love for granted, although I was so distracted and self-absorbed, maybe I did. But oh, thank you, Jesus. I can see you again, my old friend (or lover, or parent, or spouse, or kid) I am so sorry. I wish I had been able to say it more fully on earth.” My brother, after my dad died, went to the cemetary, just to say it. But then, according to Jesus Christ, we should be able to say it face to face. “I’m so sorry.” I can say it now fully.

And the third question I want to ask: “Is anyone dying or seems to be dead in your heart? .... in our hearts?” Someone you loved who has wandered, an adult child who dumped the Church, or a question about money or booze or drugs or something. And the person that you loved still just kind of seems dead in your heart. I hope there aren’t too many, but in our lives, there may be one. Can you see that person who seems so dead, so gone? Physically alive but.....

OK. The third and final point the scholars are very emphatic about was this one, and I am ashamed to admit that after forty-five years as a priest, just this past week, reading these books, it finally hit me. You know, empathy, as they say. I’d always known it but it hit me this week! When Our Lord calls Lazarus, who has been dead four days, out of the tomb, it is very carefully indicated in the gospel that Lazarus was bound up like an Egyption mummy. He had money and the family could afford all the bindings, and there was a cloth on his head, a Jewish custom for corpses. And that’s how Lazarus comes out, and Our Lord says to the crowd, “Untie him. Set him free.” Now, all the years that you and I, and I as a priest, have been hearing the Easter Sunday gospel, do you remember it says, “When the apostles hear that something has happened to the tomb and they rush to the tomb and they creep into this big cave, they see the stuff that Our Lord was bound up in, the wrappings, neatly folded at the end of the slab. And the cloth that was the Jewish custom, the cloth that you put on the face of the corpse, folded neatly in half.

Lazarus was resuscitated. He would die again, probably many years later. So he comes out fully bound. He is just resuscitated and going to die again. But when Christ rose from the dead, he leaves the shrouds and the wrappings behind. He doesn’t need them, ever again, eternal life, not just for a nice Jewish man who lived a long time ago, but for you and me and those girls, eternal life. Don’t need that anymore. We won’t have to use them again.

I’m telling you. It really hit me. (“Well, you’re old. No wonder it is finally hitting you!” ) And the greeting... The second most index cards I got from these adult education respondents at the end of the course on this gospel, the second most that they wanted to hear or say was, “We’re safe. There you are. I thought you would never come back. Oh there she is. Oh, hello. We’re safe. We are all safe and home. We are safe, all of us, no more pain, no more delay.” One woman wrote, “I want to hear ‘You look terrific! Lost some weight?’ “ ...Clearly a frivolous adult.

Frankly, and with this I will end, if I didn’t believe that you and I are going to rise again, seriously..... I had a colleague in 1964 and he began teaching in a Catholic school, and he was a priest. He taught with me in the school. He was a colleague. And he said around Easter time, “It wouldn’t bother me if they found Jesus’ bones some day. We have his wonderful humane philosophy.” .... OH! That’s not enough for me, his wonderful humane philosophy!! We’ve got Albert Schweitzer for that! “Wouldn’t bother me...” It WOULD bother me! If I thought that the substratum of our entire faith was “Well, he didn’t really, you know, rise” I would book a ship to Samoa. I would buy a small shack. I would stack it with martinis dryer than the Gobi Desert. I would! I have enough money to get a shack. And I would die, drunk and in despair.

At the end of the turning point, when we finally have the last turning point, we see Christ in the face. We are all safe at home. Father Brown says, “There is no more need for turning points.” We have finally reached the perfect permanent turning point. We’re home!