Meditations & Readings: 4th Week in Lent—Thursday

THE DEATH OF LAZARUS

1. "Lazarus our friend sleepeth" (Jn. xi. 11).

Our friend for the many benefits and services he rendered us, and therefore we owe it not to fail in his necessity. "Sleepeth," therefore we must come to his assistance: "a brother is proved in distress" (Prov. xvii. 17).

"He sleepeth," I say, as St. Augustine says, to the Lord. But to men he was dead, nor had they power to raise him.

Sleep is a word we use with various meanings. We use it to mean natural sleep, negligence, blameworthy inattention, the peace of contemplation, the peace of future glory, and we use it also to mean death. "We will not have you ignorant, concerning the last sleep, that you be not sorrowful, even as others that have no hope," says St. Paul (I Thess. iv. 12).

Death is called sleep because of the hope of resurrection, and so it has been customary to give death this name since the time when Christ died and was raised again, "I have slept and have taken my rest" (Ps. iii. 6).

2. "I go that I may awake him out of sleep" (Jn. xi. n).

In these words Jesus gives us to understand that he could raise Lazarus from the tomb as easily as we raise a sleeper from his bed. Nor is this to be wondered at, for He is none other than the Lord who "raiseth up the dead and giveth life" (Jn. v. 21). And hence He is able to say, "The hour cometh when all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God" (ibid. v. 28).

3. "Let us go to him" (Jn. xi. 15).

Here it is the mercifulness of God that we are shown. Men, living in sin and as it were dead, unable to any power of their own to come to him, He mercifully draws, anticipating their desire and need. Jeremias speaks of this when he says, "Thus saith the Lord I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore have I drawn thee, taking pity on thee" (Jer. xxxi. 3).

4. "Jesus therefore came and found that he had been four days already in the grave" (Jn. xi. 17). 

St. Augustine sees in the four-days dead Lazarus a figure of the fourfold spiritual death of the sinner. He dies in fact through original sin, through actual sin, against the natural law, through actual sin against the written law, through actual sin against the law of the gospel and of grace.

Another interpretation is that the first day represents the sin of the heart, "Take away the evil of your thoughts," says Isaias (i. 16); the second day represents sins of the tongue; "Let no evil speech proceed from your mouth," says St. Paul (Eph. iv. 29); the third day represents the sins of evil action, "Cease to do perversely" (Is. i. 16); the fourth day stands for the sins of wicked habit. 

Whatever explanation we give, Our Lord at times does heal those who are four days dead, that is, those who have broken the law of the gospel and are bound fast by habits of sin.

(In John xi.)

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St. Thomas Aquinas. Meditations for Lent. Passages selected from the works of St. Thomas by Fr. Mezard, O.P.; trans. Fr. Philip Hughes. London: Sheed and Ward, 1937. 105-107.

The Raising of Lazarus, by Caravaggio. Oil on canvas, 1608-09; Museo Regionale, Messina.

Ash Wednesday: Death

Ash Wednesday

DEATH

By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death. — Rom. v. 12.

1. If for some wrongdoing a man is deprived of some benefit once given to him, that he should lack that benefit is the punishment of his sin. Now in man's first creation he was divinely endowed with this advantage that, so long as his mind remained subject to God, the lower powers of his soul were subjected to the reason and the body was subjected to the soul.

But because by sin man's mind moved away from its subjection to God, it followed that the lower parts of his mind ceased to be wholly subjected to the reason. From this there followed such a rebellion of the bodily inclination against the reason, that the body was no longer wholly subject to the soul.

Whence followed death and all the bodily defects. For life and wholeness of body are bound up with this, that the body is wholly subject to the soul, as a thing which can be made perfect is subject to that which makes it perfect. So it comes about that, conversely, there are such things as death, sickness and every other bodily defect, for such misfortunes are bound up with an incomplete subjection of body to soul.

2. The rational soul is of its nature immortal, and therefore death is not natural to man in so far as man has a soul. It is natural to his body, for the body, since it is formed of things contrary to each other in nature, is necessarily liable to corruption, and it is in this respect that death is natural to man.

But God who fashioned man is all powerful. And hence, by an advantage conferred on the first man, He took away that necessity of dying which was bound up with the matter of which man was made. This advantage was however withdrawn through the sin of our first parents.

Death is then natural, if we consider the matter of which man is made and it is a penalty, inasmuch as it happens through the loss of the privilege whereby man was preserved from dying. (S.T. 2-2, q. 164, a. 1.)

3. Sin—original sin and actual sin—is taken away by Christ, that is to say, by Him who is also the remover of all bodily defects. He shall quicken also your mortal bodies, because of his Spirit that dwelleth in you (Rom. viii. n). 

But, according to the order appointed by a wisdom that is divine, it is at the time which best suits that Christ takes away both the one and the other, i.e., both sin and bodily defects.

Now it is only right that, before we arrive at that glory of impassibility and immortality which began in Christ, and which was acquired for us through Christ, we should be shaped after the pattern of Christ's sufferings. It is then only right that Christ's liability to suffer should remain in us too for a time, as a means of our coming to the impassibility of glory in the way He himself came to it. (S.T. 1-2, q. 85, a. 5, ad 2.)

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St. Thomas Aquinas. Meditations for Lent. Translated by Fr. Philip Hughes. London: Sheed and Ward, 1937. 46-47.