A Gospel of Delicacy
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29 July 1991
Surabaya, Indonesia

My dear Friends of Jesus Christ,

I am very happy to have this opportunity of meeting you and celebrating the Eucharist with you who share with me the precious gift of the faith which we have received from Jesus Christ through the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. I recognize, too, that you share with me admiration for St. Vincent de Paul who by his words and by his life has shown us how we ought to fulfil the two great commandments of loving God and of loving our neighbor. It is a marvelous experience for me to visit different continents of the world and to meet people of many nationalities, cultures and languages, who are united by their love and admiration of this Saint who is called the Apostle of Charity, the friend of the poor and animator of the laity.

The reading from St. John's Gospel is chosen by the Church today because of St. Martha whose feast we celebrate. It is a passage of the Gospel which we associate with funeral Masses and the final prayers which are recited at the gravesides. How often have we heard those words of Our Lord, "I am the Resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live." (Jn 11:25). Young people do not spend too much time reflecting on death. When I was young, I used to cherish the hope that I would be among those people whom St. Paul tells us will be alive when Our Lord will come again and who will escape death. When we grow a little older, we come to accept the inevitability of death, and we live in the assurance of Our Lord's words that He is the Resurrection and the Life and that, if we believe in Him, we shall never die. We live in the hope that we will be, in the words of the first Eucharistic prayer, "saved from final damnation and counted among those whom God has chosen."

It is not, however, upon death and the enormous assurance and hope that Our Lord gives us about it in today's Gospel that I wish to reflect. The account of the raising of Lazarus could be described as a Gospel of delicacy. When Martha and Mary became aware of Lazarus' serious illness, they sent the news of it to Jesus. Quite clearly they wanted Him to do something for them, but He did not. Have you noticed how delicately they expressed their request? "He whom You love is sick." (Jn 11:3). There is no shrill demand, just a gentle manifestation of their concern and an expression of implicit confidence that Jesus will do something for His friend Lazarus. When Jesus reaches Bethany after the death of Lazarus, both sisters express the same regret, but in a most delicate way. "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died." (Jn 11:21, 32). It is not exactly a reproach, but rather a delicate expression of regret. What a response it drew forth from Jesus! Martha and Mary did not dream that their brother Lazarus would be called back to life. But the impossible happened. Lazarus came forth from his tomb.

In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul expresses the hope that he may come to experience in his life and work "the power of the Resurrection" of Christ. (Phil 3:10). Too often we forget that we are not on our own. The power of the Resurrection of Christ is breaking into our lives and through us into the lives of others, as surely as it penetrated into the darkness of Lazarus' tomb. We do not raise people from the dead, but we must not interpret Our Lord's words, "I am the Resurrection," as words which will be fulfilled only at the end of time. The power of the Risen Christ is already at work through us.

In speaking to you today, I am aware that many of you offer yourselves to Jesus Christ through participating in the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul. Through the work of the Conferences you are fulfilling Our Lord's command of sharing practical love and concern for the poor, of bringing to them a little of the life of the Risen Christ. Our Lord has told us that in visiting prisoners, in caring for the sick, in feeding the hungry, we are rendering service to Him personally. We know, too, that the great test which we must pass, if we are to enter heaven, is a test in love. At the end of our lives God will ask us if we have shown practical love to the poor and needy. Jesus Christ feeds us with His body and blood. He asks us to feed with practical actions the poor and all people whose lives we touch. Pope John Paul II has told us that: "...whatever association of the lay faithful there might be, it is always called to be more of an instrument leading to holiness in the Church through fostering and promoting `a more intimate unity between the everyday life of its members and their faith.'" (Christifideles Laici, p30).

As Catholics you are a very small minority among the millions of people who live in your country. Let not the smallness of your number discourage you. Think of yourselves as points of light in your society. The light is not yours. It is Christ's. He is at work through you, even when you are hardly aware of it. To you I address the words which St. Vincent wrote in one of his letters: "I ask Our Lord...to redouble your strength, to sustain you with the essence of His Spirit, to gladden you with the hope of His glory and the success of your work." (Coste IV, Eng. ed., ltr. 1368, p. 214).

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