If you ask the question, “Where does the process of Death / resurrection come from?”, a professional theologian would be able to give a long, elaborate explanation, but that’s not necessary. All one needs to say is that it comes from God - a gift of His love, and this gift of God’s grace is always operating in our lives and is necessary for growth.

The Gospel story, in which Jesus raises his friend Lazarus from the dead, is a preview of our ultimate destiny. You know Jesus’ closest disciples would not allow Him to prepare them for His death. They would not accept it. They would not believe that He, whom they had experienced as master and teacher, prophet and healer, was going to be killed - executed as a common criminal.

On one occasion, Jesus tried to help them understand by telling them this simple, beautiful parable: “Unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies it yields a rich harvest.”

Jesus was trying to help them understand that His death was absolutely necessary if there was to be new life. He was trying to help them understand that God works through the process of death and resurrection; that this divine rhythm brings new life into the world; that unless He died they could not have the fulfillment they had been working toward. He wanted to help them understand that unless the grain of wheat dies, there can be no harvest, there can be no result, and there will remain only the gain of wheat - unfruitful and unproductive.

It is extremely important for us to realize that this process of Death/Resurrection is always at work in our lives. There are those little daily deaths that we die. We suffer a kind of dying in our relationships with other people, when we feel betrayed, misunderstood or unloved. We suffer little deaths whenever we think of our own physical death, too.

Jesus is saying that God is at work in all of this, and that, through the decaying and the dying, He brings new life. Jesus is also saying that this is an inevitable and necessary part of being alive.

It is necessary because of our rebellion against His rule. It is necessary because of our self-centeredness and because of our insensitivity to others. It is necessary because of our need to learn how to love as God wants us to love and not as the world says we should. As one saint put it, “God must hollow us out before He can fill us with His life and His love.”

It has been said that, in ages past, people in polite society talked about death but nobody talked about life. Conversely, today everyone talks about life, but nobody talks about death. We can put off thinking about our physical death, and we can rationalize our way around our daily dying, but in so doing our lives lack a certain integrity that is absolutely necessary for the attainment of wholeness of being and true fulfillment.

Jesus told Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he dies yet shall he live… Do you believe this?” Christ wants us to know that, even as we are suffering over some situation or loss of a loved one, we are safe in His hands. He wants this assurance to bring us comfort in our sorrow and peace in our hearts.

My dear brothers and sisters, we can all trust in the indwelling and Divine Presence to bring hope in place of despair and light in place of darkness.

In His Light,

Bethany Charismatic Catholic Church