Memorial Mass for Judith Blaker
May 9, 2017
John 11: 32-45
Acts 10: 34-43
Holy Cross, Champaign, Ill.
“Jesus,
perturbed again, came to the tomb” (John 11: 38).
The raising of Lazarus (Byzantine icon) |
Jesus
hates death. He hates whatever is
destructive of the well-being of his beloved friends. In the gospel we heard on Sunday, he said, “I
came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly” (John
10:10). In this story of the raising of
the Lazarus, he asks Martha and the others present, “Did I not tell you that if
you believe you will see the glory of God?” (11:40). The glory of God is revealed in this episode
of Jesus’ ministry when Lazarus comes out of the tomb, and Jesus orders that he
be set free—freed symbolically from the burial shroud and its bindings, freed
graphically from the grasp of death.
St.
Irenaeus, a late-2d-century Father of the Church—the Fathers were the 1st
theologians who meditated upon and explained the Scriptures—wrote, “The glory
of God is man fully alive.” What Jesus
does for Lazarus is only a partial revelation of God’s glory, a temporary
restoration of life. God’s full glory in
human beings is yet to be revealed.
In each
of us there already shines some bit of God’s glory. The seeds of his glory were planted in us at
Baptism and were watered or nourished by the Holy Eucharist. We see those seeds flowering—God’s glory
bursting forth—in various virtues. E.g.,
in Judy we saw sensitivity to God’s creation, especially his animal
creation. We saw it in her care for the
sick and the elderly. We saw it in her
devotion to her husband and daughter and son.
We saw it in her sense of humor. These
were simple but basic virtues. Each of
us reveals God’s glory in a different way as long as we open ourselves to his
design for us.
And
when we do that, the fullness of God’s life is promised us: “I came so that they might have life and have
it more abundantly.” God raised Jesus on
the 3d day, fully revealing the divine glory in someone human like us, and
“everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins thru his name”
(Acts 10:40,43). When we’re set free
from our sins, we’re untied, unbound, from the power of death over us, so that
God will raise us up to the eternal life of our Lord Jesus.
This is
our prayer today for Judy: that any and
all sins that she committed out of human weakness be forgiven. It was for that forgiveness, that spiritual
healing, that I anointed her twice in the sacrament of the Anointing of the
Sick in the last months of her life [make aside about the sacrament], so that
she might be raised up by Jesus—not on the 3d day but on the Last Day—to live
with Jesus and all God’s saints, revealing the glory of God as fully as he
designed her to do.
To God be
the glory, forever and ever!
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