Death is ugly. Death is never easy no matter how old or young a loved one may be. No one can escape death. I think of death as the great equalizer. All of us must pass through it no matter our title, prestige, or poverty. All of us must face death. How do we make sense of this finality?

On this final Sunday of Lent, the Gospel firmly roots us in the truth. Death will not separate us from the love of Jesus.

We need Jesus, life’s great hope, to understand death’s passage to eternal life. The Catechism teaches:

The Christian meaning of death is revealed in the light of the Paschal mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ in whom resides our only hope. The Christian who dies in Christ Jesus is “away from the body and at home with the Lord” (CCC 1681).

Christ is our hope. Christ saw death as sleep. He told his disciples, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him” (John 11:11).

The Lord of life had awoken the widow of Nain’s young son from death (Luke 7:11-17). He awoke the 12 year-old girl and gave her life (Mark 5: 35-43). Our bodily physical death is sleep in God’s loving plan. He will awake us at any moment and utter the words of Ezekiel:

O my people, I will open your graves 
and have you rise from them, and bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and have you rise from them, O my people!

At the same time, Jesus faces the raw unfiltered emotions of what we face when we are separated from loved ones in death. He saw Mary weeping over her deceased brother and he was “perturbed and deeply troubled.”

The Greek for perturbed is ἐμβριμάομαι. Embrimáomai means to snort with anger. In the translation above perturbed is followed by deeply troubled to give this sense of an inner spiritual groaning. Jesus was angry at the presence of evil in death.

When they brought him to the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus wept. He enters our sorrows as man and yet remains the Son of God … angered at the pain we experience in death.

The Son who was with the Father at the beginning, uttering creation into existence makes this declaration to Martha:

I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?

This question is not only for Martha. It is a question for all of us! In the core of our being do we confess Christ as the Resurrection and Life? Is he the one to whom we cling all our hope?

Jesus calls Lazarus out of his tomb. Here is the account from The Chosen series:

Jesus will also call us out of our tombs! He will call us by name! Even now as we live. He calls us out. Pope Francis says,

He calls us insistently to come out of the darkness of that prison in which we are enclosed, content with a false, selfish and mediocre life.

Even now as we live, Jesus calls us out of our sin into a life of abundance and joy. His constant invitation is to remove the bandages of pride that makes us slaves. It is a constant loving call to remove this mask of death, pride, and sin. In Christ, we see the beauty of who we are in the image of God.

A Thought on the Death of Jesus

In his book, Awesome Glory: Resurrection In Scripture, Liturgy, and Theology, Abbot Jeremy gave me insight into the death of Jesus and its relation to our ultimate destiny.

The dialogue between Father and Son is who God is. The Son cries uttering Father throughout his ministry. The Father looks on the Son and calls him Beloved. At all times, present in this dialogue is the Holy Spirit. Even at his approaching death, in his suffering he cries a prayer of abandonment, yet ultimately gives his life over to the Father.

This exchange of names takes place not only in time, but also in death. This exchange of names breaks the bonds of death. The Father raises his Son from death.

How about us? We can face our own death and cry out to God as Father. God looks tenderly at us as we cross the valley of death and he utters My Beloved.

As an Easter people, we know the story! The Father will raise Jesus from his tomb! The Father will raise Jesus from the sleep of death. Jesus will utter the Father’s name and speak what is rehearsed on our lips as we wake each morning. He declares, “Lord, open my lips and my mouth shall declare your praise.” This is our hope.