Sunday,March 29, 2020, The Fifth Sunday of Lent

I received an interesting question yesterday from a parishioner: What do I do if I have the virus and I need to go to confession?  Working it out, it seems safe to say that the person would not want to risk infecting others by going to confession, and the sacrament cannot be done remotely.  Also, at this time, priests are permitted in the hospitals only when it is case of Last Rites.  The answer is very simple: After confessing our sins, we should not sin again.  Some folks look upon confession as a way of getting clean until next time, but we ought to intend for our last confession to actually be our last confession.  It is fully within our power, by the grace God gives the baptized, to reject temptation and to refuse to commit mortal sin, the only sin that must be confessed.  That is the answer to this question.

The Gospel reading for today is that of St. John’s account of the raising of Lazarus.  It is a long and detailed account, laid out very dramatically.  We can see in this how these events deeply affected John.  He writes as though he is still struck with wonder, and as though trying to understand what happened, even after the passage of years.  One of the most touching passages in his account is this, in John 11, 32: “When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ ”  John carefully identifies her as the woman who had washed the feet of Jesus with her tears.  Here she is at his feet again, and once more in tears.  Her faith brings her to his feet.  Her tears on these two occasions result from her heart-felt belief in him as the Savior of the world.  Her faith is as rock solid as that of the Apostle Thomas, who had urged the others, “Let us go, that we might die with him” (John 11, 16).  But she is torn: How could Jesus seem to deliberately let her brother die, despite the love she knew Jesus had for her and her brother and sister?

John shows Jesus answering this question: “That you may believe” (v. 15).  Jesus will show the Apostles his power to raise the dead so that they might believe he has the power to raise himself from the dead.  And if he can raise Lazarus after four days in the tomb, certainly he can raise himself after three.  And if he can raise himself, then we can believe that he will raise us from our graves as he has promised.  

This “sign” that Jesus works, as well as the sign from last Sunday, the healing of the man born blind, shows two individuals who have suffered from the results of original sin, and John shows how Jesus overcame these for them.  The greatest work against original sin that Jesus will perform is still to come as we near Holy Week: the overcoming of the eternal death which is the punishment for our own sins.