{"id":6343,"date":"2026-03-21T12:19:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T12:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/?p=6343"},"modified":"2026-03-13T15:29:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T15:29:25","slug":"commentary-on-5th-sunday-of-lent-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/commentary-on-5th-sunday-of-lent-a\/","title":{"rendered":"Commentary on 5th Sunday of Lent (A), 22.03.2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Commentary by Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie<\/a><\/h3>\n

Jn 11:1-45<\/b><\/p>\n

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.\u00a0 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill.\u00a0 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, \u201cLord, he whom you love is ill.\u201d\u00a0 But when Jesus heard it, he said, \u201cThis illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God\u2019s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.\u201d\u00a0 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.\u00a0 <\/em>
Then after this he said to the disciples, \u201cLet us go to Judea again.\u201d\u00a0 The disciples said to him, \u201cRabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?\u201d\u00a0 Jesus answered, \u201cAre there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.\u201d After saying this, he told them, \u201cOur friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.\u201d The disciples said to him, \u201cLord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.\u201d Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, \u201cLazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.\u201d Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, \u201cLet us also go, that we may die with him.\u201d <\/em>
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, \u201cLord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.\u201d Jesus said to her, \u201cYour brother will rise again.\u201d Martha said to him, \u201cI know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.\u201d Jesus said to her, \u201cI am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?\u201d She said to him, \u201cYes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.\u201d <\/em>
When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, \u201cThe Teacher is here and is calling for you.\u201d And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, \u201cLord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.\u201d When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, \u201cWhere have you laid him?\u201d They said to him, \u201cLord, come and see.\u201d Jesus wept. So the Jews said, \u201cSee how he loved him!\u201d But some of them said, \u201cCould not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?\u201d Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, \u201cTake away the stone.\u201d Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, \u201cLord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.\u201d Jesus said to her, \u201cDid I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?\u201d <\/em>
So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, \u201cFather, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.\u201d When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, \u201cLazarus, come out!\u201d The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, \u201cUnbind him, and let him go.\u201d <\/em>
Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last Sunday\u2019s gospel reading was about light and darkness; today\u2019s is about life and death.\u00a0 We can expect a similar paradoxical treatment of them from John.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was dangerous for Jesus to go to Judea again; the authorities were determined to seize him.\u00a0 When he decided nevertheless to go there, Thomas said, \u201cLet us also go, that we may die with him.\u201d\u00a0 So Jesus faced death to give life to Lazarus.\u00a0 This is John showing us the meaning<\/em> of Jesus\u2019 life, or applying the first brush-stroke in this scene.<\/p>\n

An alternative (or more accurately, a disjunction) is not a paradox.\u00a0 Life or death<\/em> is not yet paradox; the paradox is life in death<\/em>.\u00a0 Johann Tauler (1300 \u2013 1361) wrote: \u201cIf only we could seek joy in<\/em> sadness, peace in<\/em> trouble, simplicity in<\/em> multiplicity, comfort in<\/em> bitterness! This is the way to become true witnesses to God.\u201d\u00a0 Life in<\/em> death is what we what we are going to see in this scene.\u00a0 To make it quite clear that we are not dealing with a disjunction but with a paradox, he tells us that Lazarus has been unmistakably dead for four days.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A disjunction is easy to understand.\u00a0 It is the way of ordinary rational thinking: yes or no, right or wrong, good or bad\u2026. It keeps the two elements carefully apart; it makes opposites of them, it makes enemies of them.\u00a0 It has the appearance of being very clear and strong: if you talk, for example, about an \u201cAxis of Evil\u201d, you expect nothing from them and you give them no quarter.\u00a0 It also looks scientific (computers are built on this principle); but it is also quite fictional.\u00a0 Oscar Wilde once remarked, \u201cIn fiction, good people do good things and bad people do bad things; that\u2019s why we call it fiction.\u201d\u00a0 In reality, good people often do bad things and bad people good things.\u00a0 Any account of human affairs that sees only disjunction would be a handbook for war, or a work of fiction, but not a gospel of life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We spend our life trying to avoid even the thought of death.\u00a0 When we do think about it we think thoughts like: \u201cit will defeat me utterly, it will destroy everything I tried to do.\u201d\u00a0 The \u2018enemy\u2019, then, is not only out there; our worst \u2018enemy\u2019 is within.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is not the way a Christian thinks about it.\u00a0 The death of Christ shapes our consciousness of death.\u00a0 St Paul wrote that we are \u201cbaptised into his death\u201d (Romans 6:3).\u00a0 The word \u2018baptised\u2019 means \u2018plunged\u2019.\u00a0 \u201cBy baptism we have been buried with him into death.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 This is not running away from death and the thought of death.\u00a0 It seems more like running towards<\/em> it.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because \u201cjust as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.\u201d\u00a0 The place of death is the place of resurrection.\u00a0 The resurrection is not an alternative to death; rather it is in death that resurrection is to be found.\u00a0 We are delivered from the crippling fear of death and of everything that reminds us of it.\u00a0 This frees us to live.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie Jn 11:1-45 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.\u00a0 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill.\u00a0 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4200,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6343"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8575,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6343\/revisions\/8575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}