THE FRIEND OF JESUS

His name was Lazarus, which means “God helps him,” and he was the brother—according to the Gospels—of two famous sisters, Martha and Mary. When he fell ill, they sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is ill” (Jn 11:3). This statement is curious because it highlights how, in relation to Jesus, their brother is not called by name but by the Master’s emotional relationship with him: “The one you love (hon phileis).” The expression indicates the friendship between Jesus and Lazarus. A profound friendship, even to the point of giving his life. Yet Jesus is not moved by feelings but by God’s will. Out of the love he has for all three, he does not go to his friends and decides—even though the emergency is grave—not to move for the next two days. This is not the first time we see Jesus not making decisions based on human criteria, however important they may be. There is a greater plan, which not even the reader imagines, and which even today we struggle to understand, and which will be fulfilled in the victory over death, of which illness is a tragic prefiguration.   When Jesus decides to go, in response to his Father’s plan (Jn 4:34; 5:36), and raise Lazarus from the dead (Jn 11:11), he hopes that his disciples, through this sign, will come to believe in him (Jn 11:14-15). That Jesus loved Lazarus is also evident from the profound emotion that grips him. Jesus sheds tears before his tomb, real tears. He certainly sympathizes with the pain, but not with the despair. And the people watching him reiterate what the sisters had already noted: “See how he loved him!” (Jn 11:36). Here we are faced with the mystery of human existence. Every man is loved by God and yet abandoned in death. A mystery, we have said, that is found on the cross and is resolved there. Death, like the cross, is not a sign of God’s abandonment. So what is it? Let us leave the question open, so that everyone can make their own considerations and draw any conclusions. We would like to offer our readers just a few lines from a lyric poem by our Tuscan poet Mario Luzi:

It will explode
not as a scream
but as a gush
of unexpressed humanity
of the poemthe gush
of purity,
it will shatter
the stone that holds him.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey