Dear Brothers and Sisters, Fiat!
There are only two weeks to go until Easter and the Bible Readings of this Sunday all speak about resurrection. It is not yet that of Jesus, which bursts in as an absolute innovation, but our own resurrection, to which we aspire and which Christ himself gave to us, in rising from the dead. Indeed, death represents a wall as it were, which prevents us from seeing beyond it; yet our hearts reach out beyond this wall and even though we cannot understand what it conceals, we nevertheless think about it and imagine it, expressing with symbols our desire for eternity.
The Prophet Ezekiel proclaimed to the Jewish people, exiled far from the land of Israel, that God would open the graves of the dead and bring them home to rest in peace. In today’s Gospel — the raising of Lazarus — we listen to the voice of faith from the lips of Martha, Lazarus’ sister. Jesus said to her: “Your brother will rise again,” and she replies: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day” . But Jesus repeats: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live”. This is the true newness which abounds and exceeds every border! Christ pulls down the wall of death and in him dwells all the fullness of God, who is life, eternal life. Therefore death did not have power over him and the raising of Lazarus is a sign of his full dominion over physical death which, before God, resembles sleep.
However there is another death, which cost Christ the hardest struggle, even the price of the Cross: it is spiritual death and sin which threaten to ruin the existence of every human being. To overcome this death, Christ died and his Resurrection is not a return to past life, but an opening to a new reality, a “new land” united at last with God’s Heaven. Therefore St Paul writes: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you” (Rom 8:11).
Jesus wanted to make known to Luisa that His entire life was no other than the continuous calling of the Divine Will into the midst of creatures, and the calling of them into His Divine Fiat. So His Incarnation, His birth, His public life, His miracles, His Passion and Resurrection, symbolize the triumph of the Fiat.
Jesus’ love wants to pour itself out, it feels the need to make known to one who wants to live of His Will that which He did, and He does, in order to make the Divine Will return to reign and dominate in the midst of creatures.
Man was created with the Creative Power of the Divine Fiat, he was born, he was kneaded, soaked in It; he will end his life in the Fiat. Yet, who knows It? Who is grateful to this divine act so continuous, never tiring, enveloping with so much love the life of the creature in order to give her life? Almost no one!
Jesus’ public life symbolizes the triumph of the Kingdom of the Divine Fiat in the midst of creatures, which Jesus will make known by means of surprising truths; and in order to obtain the intent He will perform miracles and prodigies; with the power of His Will He will call back to life those who are dead to grace, He will repeat the miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus – such that even though they have become putrid in their evil, rendered as stinking cadavers like Lazarus, The Divine Fiat will call them back to life, It will make “the stench of sin” cease, It will make them rise again to good; in sum, He will use all of His divine industries to have His Volition dominate in the midst of the peoples.
Jesus’ death matured the Resurrection, which called all to rise again in the Divine Fiat; and His Resurrection symbolizes the Kingdom of the Divine Will!
Today everything speaks to us of resurrection and life. The Gospel presents Jesus immerses Himself totally in the condition of death that reigns in the world and in the human heart. He did this since His Incarnation, taking on our mortality. Today we see Him who stands before the tomb of His friend Lazarus. Jesus’ friend symbolizes man who seeks meaning in his life and sees in death his inexorable destiny. Christ, Lord of life, meets man’s destiny of death and wins it
Death will not be the last word, but for those who believe in Him, it will be only the passage from the mortal life into the incorruptible and eternal life. Lazarus, “awakened” by Jesus, comes back to life and his exiting from the tomb predicts the dawn on Easter morning, when the women, who went with scented oils to embalm the body of Christ, will receive the announcement that The One they were looking for is risen.
When Jesus heard the sickness of His friend He said, “Lazarus’s sickness will not end in death. No, it happened for the glory of God so that the Son of God will receive glory from this.”
don Marco
