LIFE IN OUR GRAVES

SUNDAY, FIFTH WEEK OF LENT   

Ezek 37:12-14; Ps 130; Rom 8:8-11; Jn 11:1-45

I am the Resurrection and Life

As we draw nearer to the Paschal celebrations of the Church, we witness more of the tension between light and darkness, between life and death. The readings the Church places before us make the identity of Jesus Christ clear. As the identity of the Son of Man is unveiled on one hand, the stance of those who oppose him also becomes known. The revelation of light brings to light various works of darkness and also illuminates darkness for us to know it for what it really is, namely, the absence of light or dislike for God. God is the only source of true light; every light derives its source from God alone. As God put forth the light of his word and presence, each of us chooses the role we want to play. It is a choice we make within and by ourselves. Those who choose to be with God and work with him receive light and life. On the other hand, those who refuse to be with God and work against his will deprive themselves of light and life. Because our first parents decided against God when they disobeyed his will and walked by the lie of the serpent, they delivered all of us to death from birth. Without God, our mortal bodies become like a grave for our dead souls; we live shrouded in darkness. Our days on earth become troubled, and a walk in the darkness. But God does not abandon us in our death state; he promises redemption for us, from our sins and from evil.

Subsequently, the prophet Ezekiel’s reference is not to mortal death, but to our spiritual death state in which our sinful lifestyle has left us. “The Lord says this: I am now going to open your graves; I mean to raise you from your graves, my people, and lead you back to the soil of Israel. And you will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, my people.” As the Lord rightly said, only He can raise us from our spiritual death state. God is the father of all spirits and the source of spiritual life. By sending out His word, God confers spiritual life on those who receive the word and keep it. The word of God is spirit and life. So, the prophecy continues: “And I shall put my spirit in you, and you will live, and I shall resettle you on your own soil; and you will know that I, the Lord, have said and done this.” God will give us new life and make us own our body in holiness of life. We can only groan and moan in our darkness without God’s word coming to us. Even the ability to cry to God for life from our death state is the gift of God; only God awakens our souls to yearn for true life and light from God. Hence, the psalmist cries from his mortal body to God. “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord, Lord, hear my voice! O let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleading.” By the sin of our first parents, it came to pass that we all are conceived in death and enslaved to death. Therefore, none of us is a stranger to this experience of grave from which God has promised to deliver us.

The ultimate deliverance of the human race from death and evil is the Incarnation of the Eternal Word of God. By sending the Son to assume the human nature, God has planted life in human nature. As Jesus Christ informed the Jews that the Father gives life, and also granted the Son the power to give life to whomever he chooses. So that all may honour the Son as they honour the Father. God fulfilled his promise to raise his people from their graves, the power of death operative in our mortal bodies, by sending His Son in our human nature. The Son of Man confirms this when he told Martha that he is the resurrection and life, before he raised Lazarus from the dead. “Martha said to Jesus, ‘If you had been here, my brother would not have died, but I know that, even now, whatever you ask of God, he will grant you.’ ‘Your brother said Jesus to her ‘will rise again.’ Martha said, ‘I know he will rise again at the resurrection on the last day. Jesus said: ‘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?” The enunciations of our Lord here clarify our understanding of sin as death. The rejection of the word of God is spiritual death, which only repentance and profession of faith in Jesus before our mortal death can restore.

Saint Paul’s letter to the Roman throws more light on this understanding. He explains that our disinterestedness in spiritual things, that is, in the word of God, is the cause of our death experience in our mortal bodies. God is not found in us when we fill ourselves with temporal matters and attach our hearts to passing pleasures. If God is not found in us, then we are actually dead, because God is life and gives life to our souls. “People who are interested only in unspiritual things can never be pleasing to God. Your interest, however, is not in the unspiritual, but in the spiritual, since the Spirit of God has made his home in you.” The indwelling of the Holy Spirit in us is by the grace of the redemptive death of Jesus Christ, and it indicates we are now spiritually alive in Christ. The spiritual life we have now also means that our mortal bodies are meant to die because of the sin we committed in them, making them subject to sin and death. Our mortal bodies suffer the sentence of death due to our sins, but our spirits enjoy spiritual life in Jesus Christ. He died that our death may also give God glory as our spiritual life in Christ glorifies the Father in Christ. “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, then he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your own mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you.” Therefore, Christ affirms that those who live and believe will never die. With him, we move from life in the Spirit to fullness of life in heaven with our bodies and spirits.

Let us pray: By your help, we beseech you, Lord our God, may we walk eagerly in that same charity with which, out of love for the world, your Son handed himself over to death. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.