The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: S. John
Martha, the sister of him that was dead, &c. Mystically, S. Augustine says : “ Lazarus four days dead signifies a sinner buried in the habit of sin, and as it were despaired of. The Lord then came, to whom in truth all things were easy, and yet made manifest a difficulty.”
He groaned in spirit . He showed there was need of blame and loud reproof to those who have become hardened by custom. Yet at the loud voice of the Lord the bonds of necessity have been broken ; the tyranny of hell trembled ; Lazarus is restored living. Truly the Lord frees also those who are four days dead by evil habit ; for Lazarus was sleeping to Christ when He willed to raise him.
Ver. 40. — Jesus said unto her, &c. This is the same as “ Thou shalt see My glory, I who am God and the Son of God.” So Leontius and Euthymius.
But where did Christ say this to Martha ? We answer, Christ said that not in precise words, but virtually and in effect He said it when the messengers were sent by Martha (ver. 4), when He said, “ This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.” So S. Chrysostom. Again, and more clearly, to Martha herself, in verses 23 and 25.
If thou wouldest believe. Christ arouses the wavering faith and
hope of Martha ; for although she when she met Christ before had said, “I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God” (vers. 22 and 27), yet when it came to the point, when, I say, Christ, just about to raise up Lazarus, ordered the sepulchre to be opened, Martha began to totter ; wherefore she said, “ Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he hath been dead four days.” She had therefore alternate impulses of grace and nature, of faith and distrust, of hope and despair, concerning the resurrection of Lazarus, such as we experience in ourselves : when looking to God we hope that we shall overcome all things, however difficult ; but when looking to our own infirmity, when we ought to advance against some difficulty , we hesitate, we tremble, and almost disbelieve that it can be accomplished by us. So recruits before a battle show great boldness , but when the battle commences, at the first onset of the enemy they fear and fly. Whence it is said : “ In peace lions, in battle stags.” But veteran soldiers before the battle tremble as stags, but in the battle they stand and fight as lions. By this difference you may distinguish the veteran from the tyro.
Ver. 41. — Then they took away the stone . Which being taken away, the corpse of Lazarus, fetid and decaying, appeared ; so that it was evident to all that he was really dead, and that Christ offered his very body, just as it was, before God by prayers, and presented it to be raised up.
And Jesus lifted up His eyes . To God the Father, that He might teach us to raise our eyes and still more hearts to God in heaven when we pray. S. John Damascene (in Catena) adds, that Christ looked up to heaven, as to His own land, to signify that He had come thence upon earth.
And said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me . Hence some think that Christ when He groaned in spirit (ver. 33) besought the Father, mentally, to raise up Lazarus, and received an answer from Him that Lazarus was to be raised up by Him; and that therefore Christ says here, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me. This is probable.
But evidently it is as if He had said : I thank Thee, O Father,
because Thou hast always and constantly hitherto heard Me when I prayed, and especially now, when, though silently and in the mind, I invoke and beseech Thee for the raising up of Lazarus; for Thou didst grant to Me, that soon I shall raise him up. Hence Christ teaches us how to pray, that in the beginning of prayer we should surely thank God for benefits received. This giving of thanks conciliates God’s favour to us, and inclines Him to bestow the new blessings which we beg for. For he who is grateful for the lesser gifts, merits to receive the greater. This is the faithful prayer of sons, whence Christ adds :
Ver. 42. — And I knew that Thou hearest Me always: but because, &c.
Ver. 43. — And when He had thus spoken , &c. First, to show this voice to have great and prevailing authority, by which He was raising up Lazarus from death, as God ruling nature and death. Whence Cyril says, His command is kingly, and worthy of God : Lazarus , come forth. For He said this not as praying, but as bidding and commanding. A loud voice, then, signifies the great force and power which recalled Lazarus from death to life. For this was a most difficult work, and therefore required supreme and Divine power, as also a fitting voice. Symbolically and mystically, the cause was, to represent with this loud voice the trumpet-voice of the Archangel in the day of judgment, by which all the dead shall be raised. Whence SS. Chrysostom, Cyril, Theophilus, Euthymius, assert that Christ here willed to show in action what He had said in v. 25, “The hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they who hear shall live.” Hear S. Ambrose (De Fide Resur.) : The Lord shows thee in what manner thou shalt rise. For He did not raise up one Lazarus only, but the faith of all ; and if, when thou readest, thou believest this, thy mind also, which was dead, receives life with that Lazarus. For what means it that the Lord drew near to the tomb, and cried with a loud voice : Lazarus , come forth , — unless that He might afford us a specimen, might give us an example, of the future resurrection ? Why did He cry aloud with His voice, as if He were not accustomed by His Spirit alone to perform [mighty works], as if He were not accustomed to command without speech? but that He might show what is written, “ In the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, the dead shall be raised incorruptible ” (1 Cor. xv. 52).
Typically, the loud voice of Christ signifies the great impulse of arousing grace, by which the sinner needs to be called forth from the custom of evil in which he lies buried, to grace and a new life. So S. Augustine. Hence Eph. v. 14, “ Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee life.”
Lazarus. He calls him by his proper name : lest, as says S. Ambrose, he might seem as one raised up for another, or his resurrection more by chance than by command. Again, He addresses the dead man as living, because all the dead live unto God, says S. Chrysostom.
Come forth. Not as if thou wert already risen, and only now wast to show thyself beyond the sepulchre, as Origen wrongly infers from hence : but, Rise, return from the dark and hidden caves of death and Hades ; return, O soul of Lazarus, from the farthest limits of the Limbus Patrum into this body, and thence into the life, air, and light common to all living beings.
Ver. 44. — And he that was dead came forth , &c. The power of the voice of Christ is made manifest, which instantly raised up the dead man, so that the things spoken might be done.
Grave-clothes , bindings for the sepulchre, with which the hands and feet of the dead man are bound, so that they may be inserted and decently composed in a narrow receptacle. The Arabic translates linen cloths ; Nonnus, “he had his whole body from foot to head bound with manifold wrappings for the grave.”
And his face was bound about with a napkin : in the manner of the Jews, that the fact of death might be signified, and the pale and fearful visage of the dead might strike no one with horror.
You will ask, Why did Christ, in raising the dead man, not at the same time unloose his bonds ?
SS. Augustine, Chrysostom, Cyril, Leontius, and others reply that the Jews might see that the same Lazarus was raised up, who a little before had been swathed as dead, by themselves, with those bands and napkin, and was not a phantom, or some other man hidden in the sepulchre, to make a feigned appearance.
Secondly, that the miracle was twofold : that the first was the raising up the dead man ; the second that he when raised up should immediately walk with his feet bound and his face covered, and come forth from his sepulchre straight to Jesus.
Typically, S. Gregory : Our Redeemer raised up a maiden in the house, a young man outside the gate [of the city], but Lazarus in the sepulchre. So he lies as it were still dead in the house, who is secretly sunk in sin. He is, as it were, brought outside the gate, whose iniquity reveals itself even to the shamelessness of public commission. But he is weighed down with the mound of the grave, who in the committing of wickedness is loaded with the weight of habit. But these He pities and recalls to life, in that very often by grace He enlightens with the brightness of His countenance those dead not only in secret but even in open sins, and oppressed by the weight of evil custom.