Lazarus Saturday – Resurrection before the Resurrection – Fr. Gavril Galev
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The resurrection of Lazarus, who had been dead for four days, is an event that leads us towards the central event in the history of mankind, which is the most important in our lives, and that is the resurrection and the belief in the truth of the resurrection.
Up until then, until Jesus Christ, until the resurrection of the God-Man Jesus Christ, death was a mystery that no one could solve. An absolutely insurmountable obstacle before which everyone stumbled and fell. Many have tried and to this day are still trying to work out how to overcome that obstacle, how to overcome death, but so far no one has succeeded. They have tried in various ways, many of which are immoral, but always there is only one truth, and that is that only Christ is the answer. He is the truth, and the way, and the life, and the resurrection. And there is no other way or path to overcome death and inherit eternal life, outside of, and without Christ.
And only through faith in Jesus and His resurrection will we not die. And death should not be understood as an end, darkness, as something that is real. On the contrary, death should be understood as a passage, a passage to the other side of life, where is eternal joy, eternal light, love and that which God Has created us for and He Has prepared for us.
Nevertheless, death is our sinful life. It is nothing else but our sin in us. As a result of living sinfully, we are automatically dying and are dead. Because only Christ is the life, no one and nothing else other than Christ. When we are with Him, life is in us and we are alive. And that is why God’s commandments were given to us, that is why Christ left us His Gospel, that is why Christ established the Church for us, in order to be taught and learn how to live, how to live life with God. Only in the Church is such a living life. Anything other than that is not life, but survival. It is a life similar to the biological life of the plants, which once the season is over, they die and disappear forever.
However, man is a person created in the image and likeness of God, and thus for eternity and incorruption. The body is part of our persona (being), but the body is not dominant, the soul is dominant. And that this is true, is testified by the death of Lazarus. Lazarus was dead for four days; his body was already stinking. But God restored his soul to his body, and his dead body came to life.
The body is alive when the soul is inside it, when the soul leaves the body, the body dies and perishes. However, the soul is alive when the grace of the Holy Spirit is with the soul. The grace of the Holy Spirit is the life in Christ. It is a sacramental, virtuous life, when we return good for evil, when we do not sin even with thought, not to mention wrong words and deeds. Those sinful deeds, those sinful words, those sinful thoughts take us away from Christ (life) and they take the life from us (they kill us). This is the second death that Sain John speaks of in the Book of Revelation.
And it is logical that we should always choose the right choice, the right path, and that is life. And that is why we have to fight for life, we have to fight for good deeds, even if the demon with his passions, with his powers, pressures us to sin, pressures us to commit sin in order to destroy our soul. Let us try not to sin (at least, insomuch as we can, to abstain) and thus we will be alive and we will be the heirs.
When Martha met Jesus, she told him that if Christ Had been there, her brother would not have died. And that is true, if we are with Christ we will not die. However, we should believe, but not like Martha, although she believed in the general resurrection, she still could not believe that Jesus Christ could resurrect her brother at that particular time.
We need to believe in the general resurrection, but we also need to believe in our own resurrection here. That is repentance. Sin is death and that is what stinks. Repentance is the return from the dead, the resurrection, that is the resurrection of Lazarus. The Resurrection before the Resurrection.
When we repent for (in) our sinful lives, when we repent for our sinful deeds, and when we confess, our soul comes to life. Sin is a disease that infects our soul and our body. As long as it is within us, the sin expands and nothing can stop it except the resurrected Christ. The touch of Christ revives us (resurrects us, makes us alive), that touch with Christ is repentance.
Christ said about Himself that He is the resurrection and the life, and that he who believes in Him shall not die but live (John 11:25). But our faith must be strong and effective. And not like Martha who believed but did not believe. Our faith, in fact, we affirm (testify, confirm) through our lives. We cannot say we believe in Christ without believing in His words, without believing in His power and resurrection.
May the Lord Jesus Christ, through the prayers of Lazarus who was dead for four days, give us the resurrection of our souls here, and in the kingdom of heaven as well, to experience the resurrection in all its glory.
Fr. Gavril Galev
Abbot of the monastery “St. Clement of Ohrid”,
Kinglake, Melbourne, Australia
25 / 04 / 2021
