Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A (2026) - Fr Anthony Walsh, OP

Lent already has a certain sobriety, a certain restraint, a certain call to repentance. But now something intensifies. The crosses are veiled. The images are covered. The Church seems to withdraw even what is familiar and consoling, as if to say: now we must walk more closely with Christ into the shadow of His Passion. It is striking that at this threshold the Gospel gives us the raising of Lazarus.

At first sight, it is a Gospel full of grief, delay, tears, and death. But in truth it is a Gospel about glory hidden within sorrow, about faith being purified, and about life emerging precisely where all seems lost. That is why it belongs so fittingly at the beginning of Passiontide.

The first thing we notice is the delay of Christ. Jesus is told plainly: “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” And yet He does not go at once. He remains where He is. To the human heart, this is difficult. It is difficult in the Gospel, and it is difficult in our own lives. We pray, and heaven seems silent. We ask for help, and things appear to worsen. We wonder: if the Lord loves, why does He delay?

But this Gospel teaches us that the delay of Christ is not the absence of Christ. His delay is not indifference. It is not neglect. It is not a failure to care. As the Fathers saw, and as the whole narrative shows, the delay serves a deeper revelation. Christ waits, not because He loves Lazarus less, but because He is about to reveal something greater: not merely that He can heal the sick, but that He is Lord even over death.

We encounter here, one of the hard lessons of Passiontide. God does not always act according to our preferred timetable. He does not save us by sparing us every darkness. Sometimes He permits the tomb to close, the stone to be set in place, the silence to deepen. Only so that His glory may be revealed more fully.

Martha is one of the great figures of faith in the Gospel of John. She comes to meet Jesus with both sorrow and trust: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” There is pain in those words, perhaps even bewilderment, but there is also faith. She has not turned away from Him. She still comes to Him. She still speaks to Him. She still hopes in Him. Jesus leads her further. Martha begins with the faith of Israel: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” That is true, but Jesus now draws her beyond a general doctrine toward His own divine person: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

This is a turning point. The resurrection is not only an event at the end of time. It is first a person standing before her. Life is not merely a future gift. Life is in Christ Himself. Martha must move from believing in something God will one day do, to believing in the One through whom God acts here and now.

Passiontide asks of us this. It is not enough to have a general religious belief, not enough to say vaguely that God exists, or that things will somehow work out. The Church now places before us the person of Christ in His Passion and asks: Do you believe this? Do you believe that in Him is life? Do you believe that even when all appears covered, veiled, hidden, and descending into death, He remains the Resurrection and the Life?

Martha’s faith is not perfect sight. It is faith under pressure. Faith in sorrow. Faith when she does not understand the delay. And that is perhaps why her confession is so beautiful. It is not easy faith. It is costly faith. It is faith purified by grief.

When Jesus arrives, there is no cold display of power. Jesus is not a distant wonder-worker performing a spectacle. He is moved. He is troubled. He weeps. St. John Chrysostom saw here the deep consolation of Christ’s true humanity. The Lord does not stand outside our mourning as though untouched by it. He enters it. He sanctifies tears. He teaches us that grief is not unbelief. To mourn the dead, to feel sorrow, to be shaken by loss: these are not signs of faithlessness. Christ Himself wept.

Neither are His tears those of despair. He weeps, yet He goes to the tomb. He grieves, yet He commands. He enters human sorrow, but He is not conquered by it. This too is the spirit of Passiontide. The Church does not pretend that suffering is unreal. She does not rush past death. She does not deny grief. Instead she teaches us to bring grief into the presence of Christ, who has entered it before us and transformed it from within.

At the tomb of Lazarus, we see something even deeper. This sign points beyond itself to Jesus’ own hour. Lazarus is called out from the tomb, but this miracle is not the end of the story. In Saint John’s Gospel, the raising of Lazarus becomes the immediate prelude to the final movement toward the Passion. From this point onward, the shadow of the Cross falls heavily across the Gospel. The gift of life to Lazarus hastens the plot against Jesus. In giving life, Christ moves toward His own death.

This sign is not only about Lazarus. It points to Calvary. It points to the hour when Christ Himself will enter the darkness of death. Yet there is also a contrast. Lazarus comes out still bound in burial cloths, needing others to unbind him. But when Christ rises, He will leave death behind altogether. Lazarus is restored to this earthly life; Christ will rise into glorified life, never to die again.

The raising of Lazarus is both a true miracle and a signpost. It says to us: the One who stands before this tomb is going toward His own tomb. But His tomb will not be the end. The road to the Cross is already the road to victory. Saint Augustine gives us another profound reading. He sees in Lazarus not only the dead friend restored, but also the sinner raised from spiritual death.

That is an important word for Passiontide. There are souls that are not physically dead, but spiritually buried. A person can still walk, speak, work, and laugh, and yet inwardly be entombed by sin, resentment, addiction, bitterness, impurity, pride, or despair. The stone is heavy. The air is foul. The habit of sin seems settled and final. Yet Christ comes even there. He does not recoil from the tomb. He does not say, “Too late.” He does not say, “After four days there is nothing to be done.” He calls the dead by name.

This is the hope of Passiontide. The deeper sobriety of these remaining two weeks is not meant to crush us. It is meant to strip away illusion, so that grace may act at the deepest level. The veiled crosses and hidden images are not signs of abandonment, but invitations to deeper conversion. They tell us, now is the time to let Christ come to the tombs we would rather keep closed. Now is the time to hear His voice in the places of death within us.

Perhaps some part of the soul has already begun to say, with Martha, “Lord, by this time there will be an odour.” In other words: Lord, this part of my life is too far gone. This wound is too old. This sin is too ingrained. This habit is too humiliating. This sorrow is too deep. The Gospel says otherwise. If Christ can call Lazarus forth, He can raise the sinner. If Christ can stand before the grave and command life, He can restore what has been buried in us for years. If Christ can weep with us, He can also save us.

As Passiontide begins, this Gospel gives us three graces to ask for. First, the grace to trust Christ in His delay. When He does not act as quickly as we wish, we must not conclude that He does not love. His silence may conceal a greater work. Second, the grace to make Martha’s confession of faith our own. Not merely belief in a doctrine, but faith in a person: “Yes, Lord, I believe.” Third, the grace to let Christ call us out of whatever tomb has enclosed us. Not only at the end of life, but now. Not only physically, but spiritually. Not only from death, but from sin.

For this is the movement of Passiontide into deeper darkness, but also into deeper truth. The Church veils the crosses, but only so that we may seek more earnestly the One hidden beneath the veil. She takes from our eyes what is familiar, so that faith may grow stronger. She leads us toward Calvary, so that there, with Martha, with Mary, with Lazarus, and with the whole Church, we may discover that Christ is indeed the resurrection and the life.

Fr Anthony Walsh, OP is the Master of Novices, assigned to St Laurence's Priory, North Adelaide, South Australia.