When His Days Were Done And The Shadows Had Gathered

Once more we read that shortly before His Passion, when Martha and Mary sent Him word beyond the Jordan: " Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick." When He reached the eastern slope of Olivet, where Bethany nestled, Lazarus had been four days in the tomb. Standing before that marble slab behind which His friend was cold in death: " He cried with a loud voice: Lazarus, come forth. And presently he that had been dead came forth."  

But the life which had been requickened in that dead body was to die again, like the flame of a candle which has been relit.  

Lazarus was again, when his days were done and the shadows had gathered, to pass into the darkness of his grave. Not so, however, with our Risen Lord, for " Christ rising from the dead dieth no more. Death shall no more have dominion over Him." In His glorious quickening into new life sin has lost its victory, death its sting. He shall see the tomb no more, taste death never again, but shall live in joy unspeakable with the Father forevermore. Thus, too, He is the type of our spiritual renewing, our resurrection of the spirit. 

With this Easter we have risen to a new and a higher spiritual life, of which neither the raising of the widow's son, nor the daughter of Jairus, nor the resurrection of Lazarus, is the type; but the resurrection of our Blessed Lord. 

We rise to die no more. The old passions and inclinations shall no more have dominion over us. Their victory is gone, their sting lost. We shall live the new life with our Risen Lord before our eyes, and thus we shall meet Him face to face on the greater Easter in the Kingdom of His Father.

Jno. H. O'rourke, S.J. 

 Link (here) to the portion of the essay entitled, Under the Sanctuary Lamp found in The Messenger of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Volume 12 By Apostleship of Prayer

,