Extreme Trust

This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable.  It has not been verified by the author.

Introduction: When God Seems Absent

Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Both Martha and Mary say that. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever felt sometimes that you’re praying intensely and God doesn’t seem to be listening, He doesn’t seem to respond? You needed Him, and He seemed absent.

Maybe you’ve tried to be faithful to Him and are wondering, why doesn’t God listen to me? Or you’re praying for someone—yourself, or maybe someone that you care about—and it feels like nothing is happening.

I wanted to focus on that today in today’s Gospel, because it shows Jesus interacting with very special friends of His, and it shows that He asks more of His special friends. These were very special friends. The Gospel itself says, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.”

The Friends of Bethany

All of them were grateful for how Jesus had converted Mary Magdalene and brought her back to God. In Maria Valtorta’s work, it shows even more how much Jesus loved them—that they were special friends who understood Him so deeply—and that their home, which was in Bethany near Jerusalem, was a place that He could go and feel very comforted and understood.

When we were forming the association for those who are friends, who wanted to be friends of our little mission, we asked the Lord what name we should give it, and He wanted us to call it the Bethany Association, precisely in honor of these special friends of Jesus: Saint Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.

So these are His special friends, and yet He seems to be treating them worse than other people. Jesus healed so many people. The Gospel is full of so many people that He healed, often healing them immediately. And yet, He let Lazarus suffer a long and very painful and humiliating illness.

The Long Illness and Jesus’ Delay

Maria Valtorta gives more details, but it was a long illness, as I said, very painful and humiliating. His legs were beginning to rot away, and the stench was so bad that even in the house it was hard to put up with.

After that long illness, wanting Jesus to intervene, Jesus explains to Lazarus that He can’t heal him now, but He leaves a lot of mystery. Lazarus is getting sicker and sicker and suffering so much.

The Gospel says, “The sisters sent to Him, saying, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’” They know how much Jesus loves Lazarus. And then the Gospel says, “So when He heard that he was ill…” We would expect that here He turned and went immediately to Jerusalem. But it doesn’t say that. It says, “He stayed two days longer in the place where He was.”

He hears how much Lazarus is suffering, and that he is now near death—and He stays longer. He doesn’t seem to respond. He doesn’t seem to respond when they needed Him. As Lazarus is getting sicker and sicker and now on the point of death—and then dying and now dead—when they needed Him, He wasn’t there. That’s the way it seemed.

Why didn’t He come? He even could have worked a miracle from a distance. The Gospel shows examples of Him working a miracle from a distance. Why didn’t He do it?

God Asks More of His Special Friends

This Gospel is showing us something very surprising: that God is asking more of His special friends, as if there are some things that He can’t ask of anyone except those who are His good friends. We all know situations like that. There are some services that we couldn’t ask of normal people, but we could only ask of a very, very close friend.

That’s helpful for us to remember, because we might think that it would be easier for His friends—but it’s actually harder. He often asks them to carry especially heavy crosses to help Him more in His mission of redemption.

And so it’s good to know that, because it helps us not have false expectations. We can think, “Well, I used to be sinning a lot, but now I’m trying to be faithful to God, so everything’s going to be smooth sailing. He’s going to fix everything. He’s going to make everything work out fantastic.” And then it doesn’t turn out that way.

Suffering as a Sign of Predilection

This is encouraging for us to know when we are suffering. When a person is trying to follow the Lord, but then they’re suffering a lot, they can think, “Well, has the Lord rejected me? Did I do something wrong? Why is He doing this?”

It can be helpful to know in suffering that suffering doesn’t mean that the Lord has rejected us. On the contrary, it’s often a sign of a special predilection. There’s a famous passage of Saint Teresa of Ávila who said, “Well, Lord, if that’s the way you treat your special friends, it’s no wonder that you have so few of them,” because it is so hard what He asks of His special friends.

Extreme Faith and Trust

So what is God asking of them? Here He’s asking them for extreme faith, extreme trust. He says, “This illness is not unto death; it is for the glory of God.” It’s not unto death. And yet His words seem to be wrong. He says, “It’s not unto death,” and Lazarus dies. His words seem to be contradicted by the facts.

So there’s all this pain of trying to understand why Jesus wasn’t helping, and His enemies were taunting, saying, “He can save others. Why can’t He save His dear friend?”

He’s asking His friends for this extreme faith—faith so that God can act. He’s asking them for this extreme faith because of how He wants to act. And this faith, this can be excruciating. It’s one thing to read about it; it’s another thing when God asks us to live it. In our world, it just seems crazy, but that’s what He’s asking for.

“If You Believe, You Will See the Glory of God”

Listen to these words of Jesus. He says, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you would see the glory of God?” Notice what He says: if you believe. He doesn’t say, “If you work harder, if you give it 110%, if you try harder, if you get better organized, if you work smarter, if you plan better, if you work better”—all the type of advice that we hear in our world.

These great mercies of God that Jesus wants and that He needs in His Church today come from faith. This extreme faith is to prepare these great mercies, these extraordinary mercies that He wants to give, because that’s what He has prepared. He wants to give this great intervention, this great miracle of resurrecting someone who, after a terrible illness, has already been dead for four days—to help people believe in Him, especially to help them believe when His Passion comes before His Resurrection.

So He needs to give this great manifestation. But that trial—He asks His friends to help Him in that by their extreme trust, by raising Lazarus even when it seemed too late.

Application to Our Times

That has a lot of meaning for the time that we’re living right now. I think that’s the whole reason for our little Mission of Divine Mercy, because we’re living in a time in which it can often seem like God’s not listening. There is so much evil, so much pain, so much confusion, and it seems like God’s not listening. He’s not fixing things. He’s not helping. Many people feel abandoned.

The Church is living this Paschal Mystery of Jesus, and what is condensed in the Gospel into a few days is often lived out now over long years of waiting.

Messages of Formation in Suffering

I’ll just give you two little passages from two of the messages the Lord has given us.

This first one was from a message of the Reconquest, a public message that He gave May 21, 2024. He said:

“You must be formed in the crucible of suffering, of dryness, of the apparent abandonment by Us—apparent abandonment by Us. Why? So that the seed of faith germinates in the darkness, like a seed that’s in the darkness of the earth, and takes root in the darkness, and grows strong and vigorous.”

So He’s saying that that’s what we’re going through now in these times.

I’ll read you one more message. This was a message that was not public. This was during COVID, on January 3, 2021. He said:

“I must wait for the precise moment to unleash My action. I know when and how, and you must simply trust Me.”

Trusting God’s Timing

So, like in the case of Lazarus, Jesus had to wait for the precise moment, the right moment. For Martha and Mary, they would have thought that should have been a long time ago. But there was a reason why He had to wait.

He’s saying that that’s the case of what we’re living now. He has to wait for the precise moment. And then He says, “You must simply trust Me—trust beyond all reason, all evidence, all hope, all imagining. Boundless trust. Absolute, radical trust.”

So He’s saying that what He’s asking of us right now, in these dark times, is this extreme trust, to prepare us for these trials, to prepare for His great Mercy.

Conclusion: Extreme Trust for Great Mercy

In conclusion, Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live.” Jesus is asking extreme trust of His friends to prepare for great manifestations of mercy.

He has told us that because there are evils in the world like never before, the Mercy He’s preparing—the graces He’s preparing—are graces that He has kept for this time, that have never been given before, that are unique to this time.

And so, as the Gospel says, “Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.” In these times that we’re living, we ask Mary, who was faithful at the Cross, to help us, and we ask Saint Lazarus, Saint Mary Magdalene, and Saint Martha—the saints of Bethany—to help us.

Jesus, we trust in You. Amen.