![]() Jesus shows that the resurrection is an event which is already present, because he doesn’t merely cause it he is, in very fact, the resurrection and life. Moreover, the raising of Lazarus announces the resurrection of the dead, which comes about as a consequence of the Resurrection of the Lord: ‘Before your own death, Christ, you raised from hell Lazarus who was four days dead and you shook the domain of death’ (Lauds at Mattins, Lazarus Saturday). He’s presented to us, raised, at the threshold of Holy and Great Week as a harbinger of Christ’s victory over death. Lazarus’ home town, Bethany, is the home of all of us, according to Father Alexander Schmemann*. Lazarus is the personification of the whole of the human race, of each of us separately. They’re both imbued with the Lord’s impending victory over hell, that is death, in ecclesiastical and Biblical terms. Today’s feast and that of tomorrow both serve as prefaces to the Lord’s Cross. He took him out of eternal, wonderful peace so that he could act as a witness to life. For our sake and for the sake of the message of eternity, the Lord called Lazarus back to this painful and difficult life, which he completed with a martyr’s death. But beyond death and decay he had a face to face encounter with eternal life, with the living God. He acted with love and affection as the shepherd of the Church there and served for some eighteen years, until the end of his life.įour-day dead Lazarus experienced death and decay. They consecrated him as the first Bishop of Kitio, a see he founded himself. Here he met the Apostles Paul and Barnabas as they were going from Salamina to Paphos. One tradition has it that, in order to escape the hatred of the high priests, Lazarus fled to Kitio in Cyprus in about 33 A. Lazarus was with him and a large crowd of people had gone to see not only Jesus but also Lazarus who had been raised.Īccording to Saint Epifanios, Bishop of Konstantia in Cyprus, righteous Lazarus was thirty years old at the time, and lived a further 30 years after being raised. Six days before Easter, Jesus sat at a dinner given for him. They didn’t manage to do so to Lazarus, but they did crucify Jesus a few days later. The raising of Lazarus and the gathering of a large assembly of people disturbed the high priests and the Pharisees, who decided to kill Jesus and Lazarus, as well. Jesus wept at the fact of the death of his friend, Lazarus, demonstrating that the pain of death should be foreign to us. At this point what dominates is the miracle of love which triumphs over death, a promise which announces Christ’s war with death, a promise that death itself will be destroyed and made to disappear. Then came the command ‘Lazarus, come out’. He saw how death, which was not created by God, had seized his throne and now reigned over the whole world. ![]() Jesus wept because, on seeing the death of his friend, he also beheld the victory of death over the whole world. ![]() The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face’. Once this had been done ‘Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”. He ordered the stone covering the tomb to be removed. When Jesus saw the sisters and their friends sobbing, ‘he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled’. When Jesus learned of this, he said: ‘This illness hasn’t happened to bring death but to be the reason for the manifestation of the glory of the Son of God’. His sisters sent a message to the Lord, telling him his beloved friend was sick. Lazarus lived in Bethany with his sisters, Martha and Mary. Today we see the raising of Lazarus, a miracle performed by the Lord before he entered the city of Jerusalem. These are Lazarus Saturday, on which we commemorate the raising of Christ’s bosom friend, Lazarus the other is Palm Sunday, when we celebrate Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem six days before he was betrayed and suffered death on the Cross. Great Lent has been completed and ends with two splendid festal days. Hierodeacon Rafael Misiaoulis, Theologian
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