HOMILY FOR THE 5TH SUNDAY OF LENT YEAR A.
THEME: WE CAN RISE FROM OUR ‘GRAVES’ OF PAIN.
BY: Fr. Arthur Ntembula
(Ezekiel 37:12-14, Romans 8:8-11, John 11:1-45)
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The presence of God is life-giving to those who feel dead in spirit and those who are weighed down by suffering. He sustains and carries them through their pain. As he promised to Israel through the prophet Ezekiel, they too “shall know that he is the Lord.” He will bring them out of their graves to tell the story to the world of their encounter with him during their moments of crisis. It is through terrible situations that God manifests his power, and we shall know that he is the Lord. Ours is to remain steadfast in prayer. Jesus will stand at the mouth of our ‘grave’ to call us out of its darkness to live again. He will speak life into our dry bones, and we shall see his glory.
RELATED: HOMILY FOR THE 5TH SUNDAY OF LENT YEAR A
Like Martha in the gospel, we should believe that Jesus has the power to bring the ‘dead Lazarus’ in us back to life. St. Paul reminds us in the second reading that when we believe, the Spirit of God begins to dwell in us and the influence of the flesh has no power over us anymore. We might feel dead because of what we may have gone through, but the Spirit that dwells in us encourages us not to give up on ourselves and God because the God that we worship never stopped performing miracles. Those of us who behold the presence of God in truth, regardless of what we go through in life, become winners and the ‘tomb of Lazarus’ cannot hold us back anymore. We will walk out with strength and splendour, and when others look at us, they will wonder what made us so strong even when we looked so wretched, wrapped up in bandages of suffering and death.
In the first reading, God promises the Israelites, through the prophet Ezekiel, that he will bring them out of the sepulchre to the land he promised them. Then he shall put a new spirit in them. They shall be a transformed and redeemed nation. Jesus “raising Lazarus” is a fulfilment of this promise God made to his people. Lazarus represents a nation clamped up in the grave of sorrow and suffering. When he walks out of that grave with life, God shows the rest of humanity that he has the power to bring out of the tomb all those that have been imprisoned by different situations of life. God is saying he shall bring us out of our graves to the newness of life. We shall have a new spirit that shall dwell in us.
Jesus says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life…” This means that the presence of Jesus is life-giving in the face of desperation; not even death has power over him. For Jesus, Lazarus is only asleep. His situation is temporal. Similarly, our own situations of frustration, desperation, pain, suffering and hopelessness are temporal. When God calls us by name, the stone shall move away from the tomb and rays of light shall illuminate all the darkest corners of our life. We should never stop praying until our appointed time comes when we shall experience the joy of our own resuscitation from the tomb of pain. We should faithfully wait on God. He is forever faithful. Those who remain rooted in him are never disappointed.
ENJOY YOUR LITURGY
Fr. Arthur Ntembula
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