I mean to raise you from your graves
Fifth Sunday of Lent
We have all become used to a new word, ‘social distance’ and what has become required of us. We have had to come to grips with the idea of ‘self-isolation’. These new modes of life now made necessary to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 go against the grain. We are naturally social people. We reach out to the stranger as well as the friend and offer a handshake as a sign of recognition and desire to engage with them. We naturally want to hug or kiss a close family member or friend.
It is a normal part of life to want to catch up with someone for a coffee, to join people at a restaurant for a meal, or to meet up for a drink at our favourite watering hole. All of this has been taken from us.
This has come about during the Lenten season when the Lord withdrew into the solitude of the desert for forty days. In the desert a person is deprived of creature comforts. In the desert we are more acutely aware of our fragility and vulnerability. We enter a place that is harsh and austere. The desert is a place where life is absent. Deserts are silent places.
With the need to respond to calls to isolate ourselves we are being asked to enter into a desert experience.
The Lord withdrew to the desert to seek communion with His Father in prayer in preparation for his public ministry.
The loss of many of the usual ways of interacting with people, of activities that have filled our days, has given us a new gift – the gift of time and the gift of quiet.
There will be a danger to fill our new spare time with watching Netflix or just soaking up anything on television. Or we can do as the Lord did and choose to enter into the desert to seek God.
What is being imposed on us can, in fact, become a blessing. As we are being asked to distance ourselves from those around us we can get in touch with our inner life, our spiritual life. We do not have to distance ourselves from God. Let us allow the times of quiet and aloneness to be times for quiet reflection. They can be times to pray, to be attentive to the presence of God in our life.
The great saints all say that the only real way to find God is to enter into silence. As the world around is grinding to a halt, we notice that there is less traffic on the roads; there are fewer people on the streets; there is less hustle and bustle; there is less noise. We can hear the birds sing.
We are being urged to stay at home. This can become an opportunity to discover silence. We can discover the beauty of silence, and the peace it can bring to our spirits. For it is in the silence we can find God.
On this fifth Sunday of Lent the Church directs its eyes to the coming commemoration of the Lord’s death and resurrection. The Gospel account of the raising of Lazarus reminds us that the Lord’s death, commemorated on Good Friday, will lead to the joy of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday.
As the world faces the scourge of the pandemic, our Christian confidence in the power of life over death gives us hope. In the first reading today the Prophet Ezekiel declared God’s perennial intention: “I am now going to open your graves, I mean to raise you from your graves, my people”.
The Christian, buoyed up by such promises, can never feel abandoned and lose hope. God is with us in the midst of this crisis. It is the time to turn to him. This time of being asked to stay at home, to socially distance and, for some, being required to self-isolate, is not the time to be distracted by vain pursuits but to seek the God who waits for us in the silence.
Christ’s death and resurrection ultimately was the act of bringing humanity into new and full union with God. It was Christ’s self-sacrifice which effected a complete reconciliation between God and humanity. God is there for us. He waits for us. From the gift of time and silence let us unite ourselves with God as never before.
Archbishop Julian Porteous
Sunday, 29 March 2020