Homily for Memorial of Sts. Martha, Mary, and Lazarus

Homily for the Memorial of
Sts. Martha, Mary, & Lazarus

July 29, 2025
1 John 4: 7-16
John 11: 19-27
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

Christ in Martha's House (attr. Georg Stettner)

“In this way the love of God was revealed to us:  God sent his only-begotten Son into the world” (1 John 4: 9).

Abraham and Moses had personal encounters with God—we’ve been reading about them on recent Sundays and weekdays—and God spoke to the prophets.  Such revelations were rare and bespoke God’s transcendence, his otherness, and even a certain distance from us.

The revelation of God in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth is something else entirely.  Here’s a God who is close to us, befriends us, speaks to us mostly in language we understand.  All of which communicates to the people around Jesus that God loves them personally—communicates at least to those with open hearts for seeking God.

Jesus, the personal encounter with God, comes closer to some people than to others, exercising divine predilection.  So Peter, James, and John are closer to him than the rest of the 12.  So he chooses Lazarus and his sisters as a family to whom he can reveal God’s personal care in a way different than when he speaks to thousands at the lakeshore or in the fields.  They respond by sharing their home with him and recognizing his unique status in God:  “Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him and he in God” (1 John 4:15).

Jesus desires that each of us have such a relationship with him, a relationship of friendship and imitation that we love one another as our response to God’s loving us first (cf. 4:11).  To paraphrase Pope Francis, it’s more important that our love makes us believable disciples than that we merely believe.[1]  To that end, he touches us with his risen self in the Eucharist, so that we may both believe in him and live in him and never die (cf. John 11:26).

[1] Hope: The Autobiography, with Carlo Musso, trans. Richard Dixon (NY: Random House, 2025), p. 287.