After the reading from the Apostle, as we desire to return to the powers displayed in the Gospel, presently Lazarus, come back from the nether world, meets us, bringing the pattern of death overcome and offering the example of resurrection.
If it please you, therefore, before we enter upon the sea of the reading, before we grapple with the waves of the question, before we plunge into the depth of so great a deed, let us contemplate the sight of the resurrection: for we see that this is a sign of signs, we discern that it is the power of powers, we perceive that it is the wonder of wonders. The Lord had raised up the daughter of Jairus, ruler of the synagogue, but while the corpse was still warm, while death was still only midway, while the body was still present, while the person still lingered among men, while the spirit was still on its way, while the soul did not yet know the barriers of Tartarus; and, to be brief, He restored life to the dead woman in such a way that the right of the nether world still remained. He also raised up the only son of his mother;
but in such a way that the bier still held him, that He forestalled the tomb, that He arrested corruption and anticipated the stench, that He restored life to the dead man before the deceased had wholly entered into the rights of death. But concerning Lazarus, what is wrought is altogether singular; his death and his resurrection have nothing in common with those foretold: in his case the whole force of death was fulfilled, and the form of resurrection shines forth in its fullness. I dare to say that Lazarus, three days dead, would have carried off the whole mystery of the Lord's resurrection had he returned from the nether world: for Christ returned after three days as Lord, whereas Lazarus is called back after four days as a servant. But to prove what we have said, let us now taste a little of the reading.
'His sisters,' it says, 'sent to the Lord, saying: Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick.' By speaking thus they strike at His affection, they appeal to His love, they invoke His charity, they earnestly seek to overcome bond of kinship by bond of kinship. But Christ, for whom it is more to conquer death than to remove sickness, whose love is not to relieve the beloved but to lead him back from the nether world, presently prepared for the beloved not the medicine of his sickness but the glory of resurrection. In short, 'when He heard that Lazarus was sick,' as the Evangelist says, 'He abode in the same place two days.' You see how He gives place to death, how He grants license to the tomb, permits corruption its power, denies nothing to putrefaction, nothing to the stench;
and He allows Tartarus to seize, to drag off, to hold him; and He acts so that all human hope should perish, and that the whole force of worldly despair should come on, to the end that what He was about to do might be divine, not human. And He tarries so long in that place, in expectation of death, that He Himself both announces the man dead and then declares to His disciples that He is going to Lazarus. 'But indeed, Lazarus is dead, and I rejoice.' Is this to have loved? Christ rejoiced, because the grief of death was presently to be turned into the joy of resurrection. 'And I rejoice for your sakes.' Why 'for your sakes'? Because in the death and resurrection of Lazarus the whole figure of the Lord's death and resurrection was being painted; and what was soon to follow in the Lord was already going before in the servant. He had said once and again to His disciples:
'Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be delivered to the chief priests and to the scribes: and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified' (Matt. 20). And as He said these things, He saw them becoming exceedingly doubtful, exceedingly sorrowful, exceedingly bereft of consolation; and He knew that they were so to be overwhelmed by the very weight of the Passion that nothing of life, nothing of faith, nothing of light could remain in them, but that they would be darkened by an almost total night of unbelief.
And therefore He prolongs the death of Lazarus to the fourth day, He permits the stench to prevail, so that the disciples might not doubt that the Lord could rise still fresh after three days, since they had seen a servant rise after four days already stinking; and that they might believe He could easily restore life to Himself, who had thus called another back to life. Hence it is that He says: 'I rejoice for your sakes, that you may believe.' Necessary therefore was the death of Lazarus, that together with the buried Lazarus the faith of the disciples might also rise. 'Because I was not there.' And was there a place where Christ was not? And how was He not there, whence He announced to His disciples that Lazarus was dead? Brethren, Christ God was there, but Christ the man was not there;
Christ God was there when Lazarus was dying, but Christ was now to come to the dead man at the time when Christ the Lord was about to undergo death: and so He said, 'Because I was not there'—that is, in death, in the tomb, in the nether world, where by Me and by My death the whole power of death is to be overthrown. 'Martha,' it says, 'when she heard that Jesus was come, met Him, saying, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.' O woman, do you both confess Him God and say 'if Thou hadst been here'? Neither do places make God absent, nor times make Him present. Lazarus would not have died, if the Lord had been there—who was there—that is, if you, woman, had not been in paradise;
woman, you sought out tears, you found out groans, you purchased death at the price of the gullet, and do you accuse the absence of God, when you do not refuse to admit that your own presence was the cause of death? When death was procured by you, then it was matter for lamentation; but now it has been made an occasion of power, because then it was given for the punishment of the sinner, now it is permitted for the glory of Him who raises up; then the nether world found a man, now it loses him. But now, woman, believe and win back through faith what you lost through faithlessness. 'Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died; but even now I know that whatsoever Thou shalt ask of God, God will give it Thee.' This woman does not believe, but tries to believe, whose unbelief confounds her credulity.
'Whatsoever Thou shalt ask of God, God will give it Thee.' God gives of Himself, He does not beg from Himself. Why do you bring delays of supplication, woman, when He already stands by, about to grant? Woman, He whom you desire as an advocate is Himself the judge; in this matter it is the power of the giver, not the necessity of the petitioner. 'I know,' she says, 'that whatsoever Thou shalt ask of God, God will give it Thee.' Woman, thus to believe is not to believe; thus to know is not to know. The Apostle proved this, that when a man thinks he knows something, then he does not know (1 Cor. 8). But let us now hear what the Lord answered. 'Thy brother shall rise again.' And the woman: 'I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.' Martha, again you know what you do not know;
you know that your brother can rise at the last day, but that he can rise here also, you do not know; or perhaps God, who is then able to raise up all, cannot now raise up one dead man? He can, God can raise up one dead man for a temporal sign, He who will then raise up all the dead to perpetual life. 'I know that whatsoever Thou shalt ask of God, God will give it Thee, and I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.' Martha, the resurrection which you send so far off is before you. 'I am,' He says, 'the resurrection.' And what is 'I am the resurrection'? and not 'I raise up'? What is it? Because He took upon Himself man, He took upon Himself death: so that He who raises up one by His command, might by rising in Himself raise up all;
and that for those to whom Adam became the pit of death, for these Christ might become the fountain of life; and that the word of the Apostle might be fulfilled: 'As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive' (1 Cor. 15). 'I am,' He says, 'the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, although he be dead, shall live; and every one that liveth and believeth in Me shall not die for ever. Believest thou this?' And the woman: 'Yea, Lord, I have believed, and I believe, that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, who art come into this world.' He who had come to Lazarus, why is He so occupied with Martha? Why? That she might first rise in faith before he was raised in the flesh. Thus does He act, who comes to have care both for the living and for the dead:
nor does He dread the delays of the deed, with whom both the accomplishment and the power of the deed remain. Brethren, suffer the word to be deferred today, if you desire to hear at greater length what follows.