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Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.
But even now I know that whatever you ask of God,
God will give you.
How often we seem to experience something similar to this "Lord, if you had been here". Like Martha it doesn't necessarily crush our faith entirely. We still confess the power of Jesus after, saying "even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you". But we are no longer entirely sure what that has to do with us.
Jesus said to her,
"Your brother will rise."
Martha said to him,
"I know he will rise,
in the resurrection on the last day."
We know that there is a general plan for everyone. We are less certain that God's providence extends to us as individuals. There may be some distant resurrection for all humanity. But does God care about those who have lost others, who weep and need comfort now? Or are we only part of a generic plan, and a faceless mass?
Jesus told her,
"I am the resurrection and the life;
whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and anyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Jesus did indeed know his own, did indeed sympathize with those who felt troubled and abandoned, did indeed weep over the death of his friend Lazarus. But he desired his own to discover that the solution to their suffering and the comfort to their sorrow was to be found in him. He knew of the deepest longings of their hearts more than they themselves did. This is why he provided something more than the prolongation of the life of Lazarus. He did bring Lazarus to life again, reunited to his sisters. But in doing so he revealed that he himself was the source of that life. Only the life that was found in him was the sort of life that could endure eternally. It was as though he wanted to show them the the temporary goods found in earthly human relationships were meant to point toward and be taken up into the friendship with God found in Jesus himself. They lost Lazarus once and would in one sense have to part again at the end of the earthly lives. But now that they had him back through their relationship with Jesus there was a sense in which their relationship with him was included in "anyone who lives and believes in me will never die". They lost Lazarus once but had him back in a new and deeper way, a way that can be paradigmatic for all of our Christian relationships in this life.
Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
When Martha was serving the problem wasn't her service. The problem was that it was scattered and not given a unified form by the service she was doing for Jesus himself. She was at the very least serving while comparing herself to others and probably also wondering about her own value and worth. As with her relationship to Lazarus she was meant to lose this old form of service to receive it back in a new way that was centered around the one thing necessary. As with Lazarus, when it was established in the one who was himself the resurrection and the life and the one thing necessary it was no longer subject to death and could not be taken away.
There is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part
and it will not be taken from her.
The promise of Jesus to us is entirely unshakable, strong enough for it to be the firm basis for our entirely lives. It is promised not through burnt offerings and the sacrifice of young bulls, but through the blood of Christ, the new and everlasting covenant. What we receive in the mass is meant to be the source of our strength and our confidence, the anchor of our hope, the thing that unites us, along with our brothers and sisters in Christ, here, in purgatory, and in heaven, with him who is the origin and destiny of us all.
This is the blood of the covenant
that the LORD has made with you
in accordance with all these words of his.
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