must remain absolutely daunted. First, so, I
will congratulate those who were received into
this church on this glorious morning. We rejoice
with them. They entered not just great and holy
week, as we all will on Monday, but a great and
holy life. You heard Thomas in this account say
to the other apostles, When Jesus has set his
mind and his path going towards where they said
he would be killed, Thomas says, let us go and
die with him. That's a good word for the newly
baptized because you have died. We have all died,
those of us that have united ourselves to Christ
and been joined to Christ in the church. We have
all died and risen again. And we hear that. incredible
word that that word of affirmation and consolation
and triumph I am the resurrection he who believes
in me though he were dead yet shall he live yes
we have died with Christ we will go with him
like Thomas whoever lives and whoever believes
in me shall never die do you believe this that
question is given to Martha But let us also remember
that. We are being asked when we hear a gospel
such a question. That question is directed towards
us. Because it's not at all clear until we make
a definitive stand. We can hear about the resurrection.
You can see the resurrection. The multitude of
people, the people at the grave of Lazarus, And
what is the response of the Jewish leaders? They
are at that point set very definitively on the
course, as it says, to destroy Jesus. And lo,
the parable in the Gospel of John comes true.
Even if they have seen a dead man rise from the
dead, they will not believe. Why? Because, why
does anybody not believe? Because the heart is
already married to something else. Or you might
say in another metaphor, the heart is buried
beneath rubble in a tomb. And the rubble is greed.
In the case of the leaders, a raid against Jesus.
The rubble is envy. for what he had done and
the adulation he was about to receive on Palm
Sunday. The raising of Lazarus is then God's
promise to us, but we must move beyond, I heard
about it, to I enter my own heart, to sense that
the Lord has called me out from death into life.
The raising of Lazarus is God's promise to us.
It's God's message and word for us. If we are
our friends, as Lazarus was the friends of Christ,
he will help us too. If we love Christ as we
claim to, and then when we follow his commandments,
he will help us too. Most of us, I'm not guessing,
I know, are just as troubled, stressed, confused.
sometimes anxious, and sometimes angry as everyone
else in society. Because for many of us, our
focus is on all of that. And that's what feeds
our soul. And so people look at us and they say,
Christians are no different than we are. Why
should we become Christian? Where is the joy
of the resurrection in those people? Because
that's what it takes. for someone to believe.
Saint Silouan once said to Jesus in a prayer,
Christ, don't give me more joy, or else my heart
will break. But what do we say? We say, Christ,
don't give me more stress and problems. Fix this,
fix that, fix the other thing, or else my heart
will break. Do you see the difference? We've
been going to church, all of us, for so many
years. And now our catechumens have been coming
for the past six, eight, nine months and a year
or something more than that. But do we have the
joy within us? If not, we need to seek out the
reasons, the causes. And we will discover, as
St. Maximus the Confessor says, that the cause
is that our bond with Christ, our connection
with him is weak. All the coming days now. or
have so much grace, will we be able to remain
in that or sense any of it? It's because these
days are not just historical landmarks that we
somehow keep. I was at the grave of Lazarus in
2010. It's on this little street in Bethany there.
And it's a house owned by a Muslim family. Of
course, they take money, so I have to run it.
And you go through a narrow thing and you go
down a little stair. And it's a small cave area.
Somebody else here I know has been there. About
the size of our altar. And our pilgrim group
sang, How's it go? By raising Lazarus from the
dead before thy passion. And we felt such joy.
But it's here at this liturgy today that the
grace of God is truly made manifest. to the extent
we experience this grace, is up to us. It depends
on the degree of our preparation. It depends
on how much we prayed. It depends on how we fasted
and lent, how we struggled, how much we loved,
how much we visited the poor and the sick and
those in prison, as St. Paul says in the reading
from Hebrews today. So that we might hear what
God is saying within us. If our connection with
him is weak, we have to discover the cause of
that. But even when we are dead, says St. Maximus,
in the very midst of our darkness, In the midst
of our death and worries and troubles, Christ
comes to us just as he came to Lazarus. And when
you hear that he raised Lazarus, and when you
hear that he descended into the grave himself
and to death to free the souls that were there,
don't think this is something that happened a
long time ago. The heart is a tomb, says so many
of the hymns and so many of the church commentators
on the scriptures. The heart is a tomb. And deep
within it are buried our thoughts, our mind,
the center of who we are. It's buried and imprisoned
in that darkness, and Christ comes to those who
call upon him, and those who call upon him will
be helped, even the name Lazarus today. Eliezer,
we find the promise of the resurrection because
it means God is my helper, God himself, the God
-man who comes to the aid of Lazarus, the four
days dead Lazarus, the friend of God who would
be truly helped by God. That's why we heard in
the epistle also these words of St. Paul quoting
Psalm 118, the Lord is my helper and I will not
fear what men shall do to me. And why we sang
twice at the baptism, And before the epistle.
The Lord is my savior. Of whom shall I be afraid.
The Lord is the defender of my life. So brothers
and sisters. On this glorious. This bright. This
important day. This memorable day for so many
of us. Let's strive. Really beg the Lord. That
we may live in the joy. And the blessing of the
presence of God. The blessing. of the resurrection,
and the joy of Pascha to come. Amen.