Jesus Wept
“Jesus wept.” John 11:35
Jesus wept.
Think about that for a second. The Son of God, the King of Kings, the Redeemer of Mankind was reduced to tears at the tomb of Lazarus. Have you ever thought about what exactly it was that Our Lord wept for?
I just finished watching a movie called Pay it Forward. It is about a boy who designs this project for his seventh-grade Social Studies class. The mission: the change the world. His plan is to do “one big thing” for three people who would, in turn, do another “big thing” for another three people, and so on. He chooses to help a classmate who was the victim of bullying, a homeless person named Jerry (played by Jim Caviezel, the man who played Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ”), and Eugene Simonet, his Social Studies teacher. For those of you who have seen this movie, you know how the story goes. And, for those who haven’t, I will not ruin the raw emotion that you experience during the final 25 minutes of this excellent movie.
Bottom line here: I have been reduced to tears. The beauty of this story is that a little boy has a dream that involves changing the world, one person at a time. He saw that the world can be tough —although, his word to describe it is a little less refined. Furthermore, he saw that, sometimes, we have the tendency to get so caught up in our own sins, and failures, and shortcomings and imperfections that we miss out on the most important thing of all: that we are children of God.
Things are difficult these days for us young people. We live in a society that places so much value on independence and self-reliability that we’ve been relegated to strolling along the sidewalk with our iPods in our ears, listening to our self-selected symphonies, seemingly oblivious to the person next to us. Our society attempts to put different labels on life, devaluing the beauty and individuality of our souls. We’re taught that our most precious, intimate gift—our sexuality—is a commodity, a primal urge that must be satisfied whenever and with whomever we so desire. We are told that we must fit some preconceived mold of beauty, of desirability, of success…heck, even of holiness. We’re pigeonholed because we’re told that not doing so will condemn us to a life of solitude and failure.
And I’m here to tell you, brothers and sisters, that it’s all a pack of lies. We are not alone in this world. We were made, intricately and lovingly, by a God that loves us as if we were His one and only creation. “You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb…my very self you knew…” (Psalm 139: 13-14). Our very existence radiates the love of our Heavenly Father who eagerly-anticipates our every breath, our every smile. For when we laugh, He laughs; when we smile, He smiles; when we are proud, He is proud; and when we weep, He weeps.
At the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus wept. I think He wept because He knew that, without the love of God, humanity is doomed. If we allow ourselves to be removed from God, we become naked, ashamed and alone. So often, like Adam and Eve in the Garden, we find ourselves fleeing the sight of the Lord. Yet, our God patiently-waits, always the lover, always the friend.
Today, my brothers and sisters, allow yourself to bathe in the love of the Lord. Catholicism—indeed, Christianity as a whole—is full of paradoxes. Whether it’s “the last shall be first” or “the greatest are the least,” we are told that, in order for us to live, we must die. Like Lazarus, we must let our sickness—our sin—pass away from us. God desperately-desires our hearts, our minds and our souls. At this very moment, He is literally doing jumping-jacks all around you, as if crying out to your inmost being “Love me, for I love you more than you can possibly imagine. Live in me and I will keep you safe from the death that would overtake you otherwise.”
Until then, Our Lord stands outside the tomb of our hearts, weeping, wishing, wanting, waiting for us to emerge anew.
Leave a Reply