Come forth!!!

Come Forth!

Where have you laid him? They lead him to the place…. The fate of the world is at stake as death and the Lord stand face to face. Jesus commands that the stone be rolled away. Martha reminds him of the four days that have passed since burial. Have I not told you that if you believe you shall behold the glory of God? She believes but does not comprehend. Jesus stands alone with all that he is, the only one intrinsically alive among so many mortals, hence also the only one who really knows what death means. He must break this dark power….

Turning to his Father, he praises him for the unheard-of power about to manifest itself; then he cries with a loud voice: Lazarus, come forth! With a loud voice—why? In Naim it had been so easy, and at the bedside of the little girl a quiet word had sufficed. Why then the cry and the huge gesture? We recall the same mighty cry from the cross between the last word and death (Lk 23:46). Both issued from the same heart, the same calling, and are one and the same act. Here though is not only the miracle of resuscitation from death; behind the visible event, deep in the last recesses of the spirit, rages a battle…. It is against the enemy of salvation that Jesus warns. Christ conquers death by conquering him who reigns in death: Satan.

And he does not vanquish by magic, nor by superior spiritual force, but simply by being what he is: invulnerable to the root and vital through and through. He is life itself, that life which is grounded in perfect love to the Father. This is Jesus’ strength. The cry was a surge of that vitality in an all-overpowering thrust of love.

Servant of God Romano Guardini