A Lenten Reflection for Feria Sexta infra Hebdomadam IV in Quadragesima
The Church, in the deepening shadows of Lent, places before us two resurrections: the son of the widow of Sarepta restored by Elias, and Lazarus called forth from the tomb by Our Lord. These are not merely marvels of divine power. They are mirrors held before the soul. They summon us to behold the misery of death, the tenderness of divine mercy, and the approaching victory of Christ in His Passion.
Lent is already turning our gaze toward Jerusalem. The Cross stands near. And so the Church gives us Saint John’s account of Lazarus, not only to console us, but to sharpen in us a holy dread and a greater confidence. For He who raises Lazarus will soon Himself be delivered over to death. He who weeps at the tomb will shortly enter the tomb. And He who cries, “Lazarus, come forth,” will rise by His own divine power on the third day.
The widow’s son and the compassion of God
In 3 Kings 17:17–24, the widow of Sarepta sees her son die after she has already received the prophet Elias into her home. Her anguish is piercing: “What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? art thou come to me, that my iniquities should be remembered, and that thou shouldst kill my son?” In sorrow, she interprets suffering as judgment.
How often the sinner thinks likewise in Lent. When conscience awakens, affliction can seem only punishment. The soul says: now my sins are remembered; now death has entered my house. Yet God’s design is not simply to expose misery, but to overcome it.
Elias takes the dead child, carries him to the upper room, stretches himself upon him, and cries to the Lord. The child lives. This is the prayer of intercession, the figure of mediation, the shadow of a greater Prophet to come.
Saint Ephrem the Syrian, contemplating the raising of the widow’s son by Elias and the later miracles of Christ, sees in such wonders a pedagogy of hope: God accustoms men, little by little, to believe that death is not lord over all. The prophet prays and the child returns; but in Christ, the Lord of life Himself commands, and death obeys. The miracle in Sarepta is therefore both mercy and prophecy.
Saint Ambrose reads the widow’s sorrow with pastoral tenderness: grief often mingles with accusation, fear, and self-reproach. Yet divine compassion does not reject the lament of the afflicted. God hears even those prayers that are half-complaint and half-faith. Lent teaches us that contrition need not be eloquent. It need only be true.
Lazarus: the beloved friend, the dead man, the sinner
Then comes the Gospel: John 11:1–45. Lazarus is sick. The sisters send word: “Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick.” This sentence alone is a comfort for every Christian soul. The one loved by Christ may still suffer, still weaken, still die. Love is not proved by exemption from trial.
Our Lord delays. This delay is one of the hardest mysteries in the spiritual life. Martha and Mary both say the same thing when He arrives: “Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” It is the cry of every soul that has prayed and not yet seen deliverance.
But Christ’s delay is never indifference. It is ordered to a greater manifestation of His glory.
Saint Augustine, in his Tractates on John, sees Lazarus as a figure of the sinner. Not every sinner is equally hardened: one may be merely beginning to consent to evil, another already buried by habit, another, like Lazarus four days dead, already bound hand and foot by custom and seemingly beyond hope. Yet Christ does not shrink from the tomb. Augustine says, in substance, that no degree of corruption puts the sinner outside the reach of the Redeemer’s voice. The tomb may be sealed, the stench evident, the bystanders resigned; still Christ can say, “Come forth.”
This is one of the great Lenten lessons. We are often tempted to think of sin in two false ways: either lightly, as though it were no great sickness, or despairingly, as though it were beyond remedy. The Gospel permits neither illusion. Lazarus is truly dead. But he is not beyond Christ.
“Jesus wept”
Among the shortest and most profound lines in all Scripture is this: “And Jesus wept.”
The Fathers linger over this verse with awe. For here the Church sees both the truth of Christ’s humanity and the majesty of His divinity. He weeps as man; He raises the dead as God.
Saint John Chrysostom notes that Christ asked, “Where have you laid him?” and He wept, not because He lacked knowledge or power, but to reveal the reality of His human affection and to teach us moderation in sorrow. Christ does not forbid tears. He sanctifies them. But His tears do not end in helplessness; they proceed to command.
Saint Cyril of Alexandria similarly emphasizes that Christ’s weeping manifests the truth of the Incarnation. The Word made flesh is no phantom redeemer. He enters our condition fully, sin excepted. He stands before the wreckage brought by death and is moved. Yet this movement is not the weakness of one conquered by grief; it is the mercy of one preparing to conquer death itself.
For Lent, this is invaluable. The Christian does not follow a distant God, nor a merely sympathetic teacher. He follows the Incarnate Word, who has looked upon graves, has loved the bereaved, has wept, and has overcome.
“Take away the stone”
Before Lazarus is called out, Christ commands: “Take away the stone.” Martha objects: “Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he is now of four days.”
The Fathers often read this spiritually.
Saint Augustine sees the stone as the heavy burden that covers the sinner: hardness of heart, habit, public shame, the weight of long persistence in evil. Christ could remove the stone Himself, yet He commands others to do it. Augustine draws from this the ministry of the Church: preachers, confessors, pastors, and even faithful friends help remove impediments so that the deadened soul may hear the voice of Christ.
What a fitting image for Quadragesima. The Church, by fasting, prayer, preaching, and penance, helps roll back the stone. She does not herself raise the dead. Only Christ does that. But she prepares the way for His word to enter.
There is also a severe mercy here. The stone must be removed before the corruption is exposed. The sinner often prefers concealment. Better the sealed tomb than the humiliation of being known. But Christ does not heal what we refuse to uncover. The odor of death must be admitted before the soul can be restored.
“Lazarus, come forth”
Then comes the sovereign word: “Lazarus, come forth.”
Saint Augustine remarks that if Christ had not named Lazarus specifically, all the dead might have come forth at once. The saying underscores the irresistible efficacy of the divine voice. It is not a request but a command to life itself.
This is grace. The dead do not cooperate in the first moment of resurrection. They are summoned. So too the sinner is first awakened by prevenient mercy. Before there is merit, there is a call. Before there is movement toward God, there is God’s movement toward the soul.
Yet Lazarus comes forth still bound: “bound feet and hands with winding bands.” Therefore Christ says: “Loose him, and let him go.”
Again Augustine and other Fathers find here the post-resurrection ministry of the Church. Christ gives life; the Church looses bonds. The sinner raised by grace still needs release from remnants of vice, disordered attachments, temporal penalties, and the habits of the old life. Conversion is real in an instant; purification often unfolds gradually.
That too is Lent. Many come forth from confession truly absolved, yet still entangled in old tendencies. Christ has raised them, but He also wills that they be loosed. Prayer, penance, restitution, discipline, and perseverance all belong to this unbinding.
Elias and Christ
The contrast between the two readings is as important as their harmony.
Elias prays fervently over the dead child, imploring the Lord to return his soul. Christ simply cries with authority, “Lazarus, come forth.” Elias is the servant; Christ is the Son. Elias is the prophet through whom God works; Christ is God working in His own name.
Saint Bede and others in the patristic tradition delight in these correspondences: the Old Testament miracle is true and glorious, yet incomplete. It points beyond itself. The child of the widow dies and is restored to this mortal life, from which he will one day die again. Lazarus too is restored to earthly life, and he too will die again. But Christ’s miracle signifies something greater still: the resurrection of grace now and the resurrection of glory hereafter.
Thus the Lenten Church reads these texts not merely as stories of resuscitation but as revelations of Christ’s identity and pledges of the final resurrection.
The road to Passiontide
There is another solemn note in John 11. The raising of Lazarus is not only a revelation; it is a turning point. Immediately after this miracle, the resolve of Christ’s enemies hardens. The gift of life to Lazarus accelerates the plotting of death against Jesus.
This is the paradox of divine love in a fallen world: the clearer the light, the more violent the hatred of those who refuse it.
So on this feria of the fourth week of Lent, the Church invites us to see the Passion already approaching. Christ goes to the tomb of Lazarus in order to manifest His glory, but in doing so He advances toward His own tomb. He restores another to life and thereby signs His own death warrant in the eyes of His adversaries.
The believer must not miss this. The One who says, “I am the resurrection and the life,” proves it not by avoiding death, but by passing through it. The Lord of life conquers not from a distance, but from within the enemy’s territory.
A word for the soul in Lent
These lessons gather into a direct appeal.
Perhaps your soul resembles the widow: wounded, bewildered, and tempted to think every sorrow is simply the memory of sin returning against you. Then hear this reading: God is not absent from your grief. He meets it with mercy.
Perhaps your soul resembles Martha and Mary: faithful, loving, yet perplexed by divine delay. Then hear the Gospel: Christ’s lateness is not His neglect. He comes at the appointed hour for the greater manifestation of His power.
Perhaps your soul resembles Lazarus himself: spiritually inert, buried under habit, shut in by shame, already beginning to despair of change. Then hear the Church Fathers: no one is too dead for Christ. No tomb is too sealed. No corruption is beyond His command.
And perhaps you have already heard His voice and begun to rise. Then do not be surprised that you are still bound in some ways. Let the Church help loose you. Accept discipline. Persevere in penance. Continue in prayer. The Lord who called you forth also wills your freedom.
Conclusion
The liturgy of Lent does not flatter man. It tells the truth: apart from grace, we are not merely weak but dead. Yet it tells the greater truth: Christ is not merely a teacher of morality, but the Resurrection and the Life.
Elias restored the widow’s son by prayer. Christ raises Lazarus by command. Elias showed that God can hear the cry of the just man. Christ shows that He Himself is Lord over life and death. And in both readings the Church hears one promise: God has not abandoned man to the grave.
As Passiontide nears, we kneel before the One who wept at Bethany and who will soon sweat blood in Gethsemane. He is gentle enough to share our tears and mighty enough to shatter our tombs. Therefore let the soul not despair. Let it confess, let it weep, let it come out when called.
For the voice that cried over Lazarus still sounds in the Church:
Come forth.
And the Lord who uttered it is even now our life.