5th Sunday of Lent

Ezekiel 37:12-14

O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them…

Sometimes we think of our faith as a matter of observances. So we go to church, celebrate religious feasts and seasons, fast at the proper times, bless ourselves and genuflect, and receive sacraments to mark the passages of life. But that’s not it.

We may also imagine that faith is a matter of believing certain things and not others. So we make public affirmations in our creeds, profess that God is a Trinity of Beings, pledge ourselves to keep commandments and precepts of the Church. But that’s not it either.

Is faith a matter of identity:taking the name Catholic or Christian or both? Is it about membership in the church? Living morally? Praying?  The actual meaning of faith is “trust in God”. We enter into a journey of trust
in the one who made us, sustains us in the world, and invites us to live in the divine presence always. How far will your trust take you?

>”In God we Trust:. Who or what else recieves your trust, and how do your loyalties work together or strain apart?

John 11:1-45

“I am the resurrection and the life..Do you believe this?”

“Stench” We can sympathize, because it’s a word we seldom hear in our Church. Our imaginations focus on the terrible smell, the mummy-like Lazarus, and the weeping women. We are even stunned by the image conjured up with that shortetst of all verses:”And Jesus wept” Even Jesus cries at the loss of a friend!

But the heart and soul of this passage occurs earlier, Its that moment when Martha makes her bold confession of faith :” I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world”. I think its the most marvelous thing anyone says in the whole gospel because, Martha says it standing in the road, grieving her brothers death and mad -mad a Jesus. Amazing!

>> In times of loss, rage, or confusions -like the times we are now experiencing with this virus-what do you still believe in?