Come Out!

Thinking about today’s Gospel I had a flashback

To an old television show of the early 1950’s.

One we were eager to watch every week at my grandma’s house.

Back in the days before we had our own TV set.

It was called, I Led Three Lives. 

And it told the stories of an FBI agent whose three lives were:

Citizen, Communist, and Counterspy.

Through the magic of YouTube I watched an old episode.

It wasn’t exactly as I remembered.

It had that old movie feel of: black and white; plain, direct dialogue;

Melodrama; and outdated styles.

It was also steeped in McCarthy-era anti-communism.

It was a good example of how we store away memories and perceptions.

How we tend to leave them sitting, undisturbed.

But how revisiting them from a different perspective

Can lead to new insights and better understanding.

The reason I Led Three Lives came to mind was the thought that

We all live three lives.

We’re all familiar with at least two of those lives.

Our Physical/Material life, and our Spiritual life. 

They’re fully integrated.

We’re not spirits trapped in bodies.

We’re simultaneously both physical and spiritual.

But we’re accustomed to looking at those two lives separately.

We might add to those a third life, and call it our Communal life.

Of course, all three lives closely overlap, and greatly impact each other.

And we definitely shouldn’t try to live them separately.

But viewing them separately can help us analyze how we’re doing.

There’s a popular legal expression:

The law is a seamless web.

If you pull it here, it stretches over there.

If you pluck a strand here, it sends vibrations throughout the whole web.

To study and analyze anything complex, like the law

It helps to break it into smaller subparts and examine those.

Like Constitutional Law, Property Law, and Criminal Law.

One of the few things more complex than our law, is our life.

So maybe we can get a deeper understanding and new insight

By breaking our life into different subparts—different views.

Looking at our life from three different perspectives.

Our Physical life centers on our body, our beating heart, our senses,

Our health and our strength.

Our Communal life centers on our roles in our family and in the world.

And how we go about fulfilling those roles.

Our Spiritual life centers on our own relationship with God.

That life within us that makes us—us.

That unique soul that God created for us.

Jesus led these three lives too.

And in today’s Gospel reading, he gives us some insights into those lives.

Insights drawn from facing death.

Elsewhere in the Gospels,

Jesus was usually quite calm and philosophical about his own death.

He’d be troubled when he thought about the manner of his coming death.

But he wasn’t troubled at the idea of dying.

Today though, we hear that he was troubled over the death of Lazarus.

He was emotional, he became deeply troubled, and he wept!

Did he weep for poor dead Lazarus?

Probably not, Jesus knew very well the Heaven that awaited Lazarus.

Did Jesus weep for himself at his own loss of a friend?

Probably not; again, Jesus knew the glory and splendor of Heaven.

He knew that they’d be together again—and soon.

Did he weep for the distress and sorrow Martha and Mary were feeling?

I think that’s it.

They were his friends.

He loved them, he had great empathy with them.

He knew the emotional pain of loss they were feeling.

He knew that, even though they had faith that Lazarus would rise

At the resurrection on the last day,

They also had that human twinge of uncertainty.

He knew too that without their brother, they faced a difficult future.

We can view Jesus’s actions and words at Lazarus’s death

Through the perspective of his, and our, three lives.

As he was about to raise Lazarus, Jesus started with a prayer.

Father, I thank you for hearing me.
I know that you always hear me; 

That’s clearly a statement from his Spiritual life.

But he goes on to add:
… because of the crowd here I have said this,
that they may believe that you sent me.

That addition is a Communal-life statement.

He makes it clear that he’s saying those words,

He’s taking this action, he’s raising Lazarus,

For our benefit.

So that we might believe.

That reaffirmed the Communal-life message he gave his disciples

Before they left for Bethany.

Lazarus has died.
And I am glad for you that I was not there,
that you may believe … 

[He died] that the Son of God may be glorified through it.

Talking with Martha, he gave us a strong statement on his Spiritual life.

I am the resurrection and the life;
whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.

But that was also a statement on our Spiritual life.

We are to believe in him; and our Spirit will never die.

And a statement on our Physical life.

Our bodies will die; but they will also be resurrected.

And finally, we have his dramatic action with the words

Lazarus come out!

A statement from his Spiritual life and his oneness with God.

A statement from his Communal life, a life dedicated to our benefit.

A statement about our Spiritual and Physical lives. 

We will die and we will rise.

This three-lives perspective can add new insight 

To our view of Jesus’s life.

And it can do the same for our own life.

It can help us keep our priorities straight.

It can help us make a better assessment of how we’re doing.

Here we are, already approaching the end of Lent.

Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, then Holy Week.

Here we are at Church.

So, chances are good that we’re tuned in

To the most important of our three lives—our Spiritual life.

In just a minute—I’m almost finished—

Fr. Bill will call our RCIA members forward for their Third Scrutiny.

Clearly, they’ve been giving thought and taking action 

In their Spiritual lives.

We’ll pray that they come to share in this abundant life,

This freedom from death, that Jesus promises us.

For the rest of us, if we’re looking for something more to do during Lent,

There’s still time to do a self-assessment of our three lives.

We don’t have full control over any of those lives.

But we have some control, and we can look for things we might improve.

It’s usually pretty clear to us if something’s amiss in our Physical life.

And if there is, we can get to work on trying to fix it.

It’s also sometimes clear to us that something’s amiss

In our Spiritual or Communal lives.

But the warnings are often less striking than Physical-life warnings.

We don’t get that unbearable toothache or that sudden heart attack.

So, unless we step back to assess how we’re doing, 

We might miss something.

We can take some prayer time, or make some more prayer time.

And use it to take a fresh look at our life from those three perspectives.

Any time we spend in that assessment will be quality time 

Spent with God.

And it might even yield some new insights about Him.
Or about ourselves.

5th Sunday of Lent
(Mass with RCIA Scrutiny)

Jn 11:1-45   Read this Scripture @usccb.org