Jesus stood at the edge of the Jordan, watching the water in silence. His face was sad but at peace, reflecting the same mixture of sorrow and hope that was turning in his heart. The apostles watched Him, not daring to intrude on his melancholy, sensing that the words He had heard a couple of days before were still echoing in the depths of his heart: “Lord, the one you love is ill” (Jn 11:3).
At last Jesus turned to his disciples and told them, “Let us go back to Judea” (Jn 11:7). The disciples were taken aback and they looked at one another in disbelief. Only a few days earlier, there had been an attempt to kill Jesus. So they tried to talk Him out of it. They were deaf to the truth, refusing to understand that Lazarus had died: “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover” (Jn 11:12). We too often dress up our fear and concern for comfort in arguments that sound convincing, yet, like withered autumn leaves, fall at the first gust of wind? It was Thomas — the apostle who would later prove the most doubtful — who dared to face reality: “Let us also go, that we may die with Him” (Jn 11:16).
Martha’s boldness
By the time Jesus was near Bethany, the news had already spread from mouth to mouth, as word often does in a small town. In the previous days, Martha and Mary had surely spoken often of Jesus, the famous Teacher from Galilee and mysterious prophet of the Kingdom — though for them He was simply a good friend. Full of hope, they had sent a messenger with the sad news of their brother’s illness. And they had been disappointed when, day after day, they searched for Him in the crowds that came to console them, and didn’t find Him. So Jesus’ arrival must have caused quite a stir.
Martha, the most energetic and determined member of the family, found the strength to face the Master head-on. She dropped what she was doing without even waiting for Mary to follow, and turned a deaf ear to all the neighbors trying to offer their condolences. She needed to pour out her heart to Christ. Just as on that other occasion when she had had to watch her sister sit motionless, listening to Jesus, while she herself struggled to keep the household running, Martha felt misunderstood by the Lord. And so, with that mixture of trust and disappointment that can only be born of true friendship, Martha — without even a polite greeting — blurted out the contradictory feelings churning inside her: “If you had been here, my brother would not have died” (Jn 11:21). Behind those words lay a deeper pain. Jesus’ lack of punctuality, his apparent indifference, the unhurried way He had set out once He learned of Lazarus’ death — all of it weighed on Martha. But as though sensing she was being unfair to Him, and that her grief had perhaps led her to speak discourteously to a friend who had always been so faithful, she tried to correct herself: “Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You” (Jn 11:22).
From that small, trusting opening, Jesus began a conversation with Martha to calm her unease and help her understand that his delay had a purpose she could not yet imagine. “Your brother will rise again” (Jn 11:23), He told her, with a firmness that might have shaken the very stones sealing Lazarus’ body. And Martha, hinting that she suspected Christ only meant to console her with the hope of some future resurrection, answered almost mechanically, with the weary tone of a dutiful student faced with a question too simple for her: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (Jn 11:24). Then Jesus, gently guiding the conversation further, took one more step: “I am the resurrection and the life… Do you believe this?” (Jn 11:26).
Jesus wanted the pain of loss to lead Martha to a far greater gain: to make her see that in Him, not only would Lazarus receive a new life that could never be taken from him again, but that she too, here and now, was called to cultivate a new way of living that went beyond the bounds of biology. He wanted her to understand that their friendship, far from being a passing sentiment, was the seed of an eternal relationship, capable of transforming every present moment. “Jesus Christ radically transforms man’s relationship with God, which is henceforth a relationship of friendship. Therefore, the only condition of the new covenant is love.”[1] The words seem to have shaken Martha, for — probably without fully grasping their meaning — she surrendered with an answer full of faith: “Yes, Lord. I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world” (Jn 11:27).
The price of a new life
Trusting that her contemplative sister would help her grasp the depths of the mystery of life and death that Jesus had hinted at, Martha went to find Mary. As soon as Mary heard Christ’s name, she set out at once and did not stop until she could fall at his feet, carrying with her all the weight of her sleepless nights: “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died” (Jn 11:32). Those same words of Martha’s pierced Christ’s heart once again, like a sharp arrow. Mary began to weep. Jesus was deeply moved, thinking of his memories of his good friend Lazarus and his bond with the two sisters. So when He asked Mary where her brother had been buried, He could no longer hold back his tears, and he wept so humanly, and so divinely, that everyone remarked: “See how much He loved him!” (Jn 11:36). His weeping carried a particular weight. “All this human behaviour is the behaviour of God… Christ is God become man: a complete, perfect man. And through his human nature, He shows us what his divine nature is.”[2]
Amid that atmosphere of genuine grief, someone dared to voice bluntly what perhaps many had been thinking for some time without daring to say it: “Could not He who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” (Jn 11:37). At that moment, it surely hurt Jesus more that they doubted his love for Lazarus than that they doubted his power. He must feel something similar whenever we reproach Him for not caring about our lives, or for turning a deaf ear to our needs, hinting that He treats us with indifference or coldness. But Jesus does not let Himself be daunted by human distrust; He is always ready to awaken faith, to sow hope, and to make love shine forth. “If you agree to let God take command of your boat, if you let Him be the master, how safe you will be!… even when He seems to have gone away, to have fallen asleep, to be unconcerned; even though a storm is rising and it’s pitch dark all around you.”[3]
When Jesus reached the tomb, He surprised everyone with a disconcerting request: he asked that the stone be rolled away from the cave where his friend lay. Then Martha — perhaps by now weary of Jesus’ puzzling behavior, and shouldering the responsibility her brother’s death had left her — stepped in with an objection full of common sense: “Lord, by now there will be a bad smell, for he has been dead four days” (Jn 11:39). Once again, Martha felt the need to underscore Christ’s delay. The greater the disappointment, the harder it becomes to welcome the present moment, and the less hope we have for the future; we experience the sorrowful past, by contrast, as a vast abyss with no way out. In that tomb lay not only the decaying body of Lazarus, but also Martha’s dying faith. Hence Jesus’ emphatic yet patient reply: “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?” (Jn 11:40). In Bethany, “we also learn that Christ’s friendship produces a deep trust (cf. Jn 11:21) and is filled with empathy, especially the ability to accompany others in their suffering (cf. Jn 11:35).”[4]
As skeptical hands rolled the stone from the tomb, and the Jews – relatives, neighbors, and onlookers – gradually gathered around Jesus, He kept his eyes fixed on heaven, as though by that gesture He wished to lift the hearts of everyone present. “Father, I thank You for having heard me. I knew that You always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing here, that they may believe that You sent Me” (Jn 11:41-42). After a moment of silence, drawing strength from the deepest part of his spirit, He cried out with conviction: “Lazarus, come out!” (Jn 11:43). His good friends had responded to his words so many times before, whether with thanks, a request, or a story. Such was the power of those words that, to everyone’s astonishment, they elicited a response again now: they brought Lazarus back to life. He came out of the cave, his limbs bound and his face covered with a cloth. Love and life had triumphed over death.
The two sisters, full of gratitude but also with a certain inner shame for having doubted the faithfulness of Christ’s friendship and his power, must have rushed to free Lazarus from his burial cloths. Some of the neighbors, moved by that family reunion which had crossed the boundary between life and death, must have shed a few tears. “Many of the Jews who had come with Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in Him” (Jn 11:45).
Little by little the apostles seemed to grasp why the Master had wanted to delay, though they still could not understand the deeper reason behind it. Jesus, meanwhile, remained calm, contemplating the scene with the faintest of smiles. He knew that some among the crowd had already set out for Jerusalem, that they would speak to the Pharisees and the chief priests about the fame He had gained from so astonishing a miracle, and that at a meeting presided over by Caiaphas, the high priest that year, they would finally decide to put Him to death. While everyone celebrated Lazarus’ resurrection, and the silence of disbelief gave way to the sounds of joy, only Jesus knew that He had paid for his friend’s new life with his own death. His hour had come at last.
* * *
“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:13). It is no wonder that, in speaking these words at the Last Supper, Jesus was also thinking of Lazarus, and of what had happened in Bethany a few weeks earlier. In a few moments He would be handed over to the chief priests by one of his own, someone with whom He had shared dreams and sorrows, speech and silence. Almost all the apostles, the very ones now listening to Him with such affection, would scatter into the night; not even Thomas would remember his promise to die with Him. Peter, the rock chosen to hold up the whole Church, would fall to pieces. And Lazarus, whom Jesus had gone to seek in the darkest depths of death, would not be ready to go down with Him into the mystery of the Cross.
And yet Jesus knew very well that this death, with which He was paying for his friend’s resurrection, would open the way to a new life for all of them. “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live” (Jn 11:25). Neither Martha nor Mary, neither the apostles nor even the risen Lazarus, had grasped the full depth of these words. What had begun with a melancholy gaze upon the waters of the Jordan was about to become a current that would run through all of history, carrying men and women — Lazarus among them — in its waves, all the way to eternal life.
[1] Leo XIV, General Audience, 14 January 2026.
[2] Christ is Passing By, no. 109.
[3] Friends of God, no. 22.
[4] Msgr. Fernando Ocáriz, Pastoral Letter, 1 November 2019, no. 2.