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| photo courtesy of wondermade |
It’s one of the most significant miracles recorded in the Gospels: Lazarus, a beloved friend of Jesus, had already been dead and buried for four days; Jesus, in an act pre-figuring His own resurrection, miraculously raised Lazarus from the dead. However, unlike Jesus, Lazarus did not have a glorified, resurrected body, but rather a “normal”, earthly body brought back to life. This meant he eventually (for the second time and for good), died a physical death; as to when and how, the bible does not tell us.
The miracle of Lazarus highlights a subject many don’t feel comfortable thinking of, much less talk about - death. Though we should not obsess over death, it would do well for us to contemplate it once in a while. The most obvious reason being its certainty; all of us will die someday.
Advances in medical science continuous to add years to the human life span but this merely delay the inevitable. When a loved one becomes seriously ill, we should pray for their fast recovery and healing. But even if by some miracle, a terminally ill patient gets cured, death, as it did with Lazarus, would still eventually catch up with that person. What should we do then?
Christian apologist Dinesh D’Souza suggests that more important than praying for physical healing, we also ought to pray for “a deeper kind of healing… the healing of the soul.” Perhaps a kind of healing that, as the inimitable Archbishop Fulton Sheen said, would teach us to “love goodness to a point where we can drink death like water”; a kind of healing that will prepare us to embrace, rather than fear, death; and a kind that will enable us to see death as a gateway to eternal life.
