Bible Study Notes 3/16/26
5th Sunday of Lent
Every Monday night for a few hours, I attend a Bible study group that meets at the local Fatima Shrine. The shrine’s rector leads the group as we analyze and share our thoughts on the readings for the upcoming Sunday Mass. I’m hopeful that sharing my notes will help me continue to think and pray with these passages before Mass, and will also give you an opportunity to delve a little deeper into the Word of God.
Disclaimer: Since my note-taking is somewhat erratic and illegible, I’ll add any information that I may have missed or mistranscribed during the meeting. Please keep in mind that this is not intended to be a comprehensive study that examines every possible aspect of the readings and tells you what is most important. Instead, these are just points that made an impact on me, or as a group, we explored. Think of these notes as adding to your background knowledge of the passages, so when you go to pray with them, something new may distinguish itself that did not before.
Readings for the 5th Sunday of Lent
Ezekiel 37:12-14
Romans 8:8-11
John 11:1-45
A prayer before reading and studying these passages in preparation for Holy Mass by St. John Chrysostom:
O Lord Jesus Christ, open Thou the eyes of my heart, that I may hear Thy word and understand and do Thy will, for I am a sojourner upon the earth. Hide not Thy commandments from me, but open mine eyes, that I may perceive the wonders of Thy law. Speak unto me the hidden and secret things of Thy wisdom. On Thee do I set my hope, O my God, that Thou shalt enlighten my mind and understanding with the light of Thy knowledge, not only to cherish those things which are written, but to do them; that in reading the lives and sayings of the saints I may not sin, but that such may serve for my restoration, enlightenment and sanctification, for the salvation of my soul, and the inheritance of life everlasting. For Thou art the enlightenment of those who lie in darkness, and from Thee cometh every good deed and every gift. Amen.
Ezekiel 37:12-14
Thus says the Lord GOD:
O my people, I will open your graves
and have you rise from them,
and bring you back to the land of Israel.
Then you shall know that I am the LORD,
when I open your graves and have you rise from them,
O my people!
I will put my spirit in you that you may live,
and I will settle you upon your land;
thus you shall know that I am the LORD.
I have promised, and I will do it, says the LORD.
We focused so much on the Gospel that we really didn’t have a chance to talk about this reading. However, it should be noted that it seamlessly touches on both the Romans and John passages.
Also, the parallel between Matthew 27:51-54 and this passage was noted.
Romans 8:8-11
Brothers and sisters:
Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh;
on the contrary, you are in the spirit,
if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.
Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
But if Christ is in you,
although the body is dead because of sin,
the spirit is alive because of righteousness.
If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
the one who raised Christ from the dead
will give life to your mortal bodies also,
through his Spirit dwelling in you.
The theme of life versus death is present, but the passage itself is a riff on the conclusion of earlier verse 4, and Paul decides to go all in starting on verse 5.
Dichotomy presented between a believer and a non-believer.
You can live this life (in this life) and still live in the Spirit. You must find a way to live out your vocation and constantly discern if you are truly living in the Spirit.
Verses 5-7 on setting your mind on God are related to Deuteronomy 30:19 and Psalm 118, the Lord is imploring His people to choose life over death.
Scrupulosity rejects the flesh to obsess over the spirit, forgetting the rest of the spiritual life. It masquerades as a virtue. For example, someone thinks they are lazy, so they make business their idol.
An idol is created by placing impossible standards in front of your eyes. I thought of the traditional parish I left years ago, partly because there was an unhealthy number of impossible standards being placed on the women of the community.
This passage is not an anthropology of hylomorphism (body/soul unity). Paul is focusing on the spirit and our life experience in the soma.
In other words, we are ‘man-imals.’ Your body is good, let’s not delve into Manichaeism. But we need to live with the goal of ultimate satisfaction in God, overcoming the base desires.
Are you living according to virtue or vice?
St. Teresa of Avila lived in a Carmelite monastery and struggled to live in the spirit. She realized that her constant acquiescence to the ‘flesh,’ i.e., wanting to gossip in the parlor and to accept gifts from the outside world to make her life more comfortable, was interfering with her call to holiness and to live in the spirit. She transitioned from living in transient pleasures to transverberation.
This switch from flesh to spirit involves a death to the ego and self-denial.
I appreciate the zeal of new converts who have told me stories of how they were living a hollow existence in the world before coming to Christ. Now, after their conversion, they still live their lives, but with a mission orienting them towards Heaven.
John 11: 1-45
Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany,
the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil
and dried his feet with her hair;
it was her brother Lazarus who was ill.
So the sisters sent word to him saying,
“Master, the one you love is ill.”
When Jesus heard this he said,
“This illness is not to end in death,
but is for the glory of God,
that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
So when he heard that he was ill,
he remained for two days in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to his disciples,
“Let us go back to Judea.”
The disciples said to him,
“Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you,
and you want to go back there?”
Jesus answered,
“Are there not twelve hours in a day?
If one walks during the day, he does not stumble,
because he sees the light of this world.
But if one walks at night, he stumbles,
because the light is not in him.”
He said this, and then told them,
“Our friend Lazarus is asleep,
but I am going to awaken him.”
So the disciples said to him,
“Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.”
But Jesus was talking about his death,
while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep.
So then Jesus said to them clearly,
“Lazarus has died.
And I am glad for you that I was not there,
that you may believe.
Let us go to him.”
So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples,
“Let us also go to die with him.”When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus
had already been in the tomb for four days.
Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away.
And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary
to comfort them about their brother.
When Martha heard that Jesus was coming,
she went to meet him;
but Mary sat at home.
Martha said to Jesus,
“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.”
Jesus said to her,
“Your brother will rise.”
Martha said to him,
“I know he will rise,
in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus told her,
“I am the resurrection and the life;
whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this?”
She said to him, “Yes, Lord.
I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,
the one who is coming into the world.”When she had said this,
she went and called her sister Mary secretly, saying,
“The teacher is here and is asking for you.”
As soon as she heard this,
she rose quickly and went to him.
For Jesus had not yet come into the village,
but was still where Martha had met him.
So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her
saw Mary get up quickly and go out,
they followed her,
presuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there.
When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him,
she fell at his feet and said to him,
“Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping,
he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said,
“Where have you laid him?”
They said to him, “Sir, come and see.”
And Jesus wept.
So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.”
But some of them said,
“Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man
have done something so that this man would not have died?”So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb.
It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.
Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”
Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him,
“Lord, by now there will be a stench;
he has been dead for four days.”
Jesus said to her,
“Did I not tell you that if you believe
you will see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone.
And Jesus raised his eyes and said,
“Father, I thank you for hearing me.
I know that you always hear me;
but because of the crowd here I have said this,
that they may believe that you sent me.”
And when he had said this,
He cried out in a loud voice,
“Lazarus, come out!”
The dead man came out,
tied hand and foot with burial bands,
and his face was wrapped in a cloth.
So Jesus said to them,
“Untie him and let him go.”Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary
and seen what he had done began to believe in him.
This Gospel passage continues the pattern of signs/events that John employs to point towards the true identity of Christ and bring about faith in Him.
It may seem counterintuitive, but miracles don’t just give someone faith; in a certain sense, Christ is revealing the power of God through these signs so that people can come to believe in Him. However, they first must be open to that sign.
Difference of the responses between Martha and Mary:
Martha goes up to Jesus first, while Mary remains grieving inside.
Important to note that Mary of Magdala is not Mary of Bethany.
Martha and Mary say the exact same line: verses 21 and 32.
Martha originally gets it wrong, thinking of the future resurrection at the end of time, and in a way, she tries to steer the conversation towards this end, unaware of what Jesus has said to the 12.
Why was an immediate miracle not on Martha’s mind, as opposed to her idea of a future one? Maybe she was subconsciously putting a limit on Christ’s power, not realizing His identity as Son of God and Son of Man?
If I were Martha, I’d like to believe that I had such a faith in Christ that I would ask Him to bring my brother back at the moment I saw Him.
Perhaps it is easier to believe in an eschatological future, rather than an immediate command.
Christians today take these moments of grief and turn them into an opportunity for faith.
Christ waits 4 days, not 3 (maybe so it doesn’t get confused with His own Resurrection and is recognized as just a sign pointing towards this future reality).
He waits even though they had faith in Him. Was this because they knew what to say, indicating faith, but did they truly understand what those words meant?
The Gospels for the past 2 weeks indicate that Jesus waits so that God may be glorified. But now, He waits so that the Son of Man is glorified in light of His coming hour.
God is glorified because the Son of Man has the power over life and death. It is one thing to have power over illness, but another to have it over death itself. The story of Lazarus shows that Christ can defeat even death. This is parallel to the consolation of the Transfiguration in revealing who the Son of Man truly is.
This is also the event that puts Christ on the path to death as recorded in verses 45-57.
The lifting up of Christ on the Cross is the glorification of the Son of Man (Jn 3:13-15).
In verse 9, it indicates that Christ can travel safely in the daylight of Judaea, so long as His hour lies ahead of Him (7:30; 10:39).
Talitha koum is a Synoptic account of raising someone from the dead (Mk 5:41).
In verse 16, you gotta love Thomas’ bluntness, I sympathize with his perceived need to physically connect himself to Christ, whether it is in death like in this passage, or even when he thinks he needs to touch Jesus’ wounds to know it is Him.
Thomas is a hands-on believer, but this was his mustard seed of faith: seeing to believe. Christ took that seed and watered it by allowing Thomas’ hand to enter His wounds.
John is relating this exact same concept by telling us about the signs of faith Jesus performed. We believers need a seed of faith for God to water with a miracle.
Belief is a correspondence of the will.
Verse 37 is similar to what the Jews said to Christ while He was on the cross.
Why does Christ weep?
He knows that He can bring Lazarus back, so it may go deeper than empathizing with the crowd. It could be because of the lack of faith present in those who claim to believe.
It’s not to say that Christ doesn't have mercy for the suffering/grief of his friends, but He is trying to get them to understand His identity.
In verse 42, faith in Who Christ is is the central point of John’s narrative.
The Church Fathers look at this from multiple angles. There is a literal meaning of Christ’s compassion and humanity, another allegorical meaning in the people’s lack of faith, and a symbolic meaning of a foretaste of Christ’s Resurrection.
Cornelius a Lapide cites several Church Fathers for the reasons Jesus wept:
“First, Cyril says that Christ wept for the miseries of the human race brought in by sin. Secondly, Andrew Cretensis says that He wept for the unbelief of the Jews, and because they would not believe in Christ, even after they had seen the miracle of the raising of Lazarus. Thirdly, Isidore of Pelusium and Rupertus think that Christ wept for the very reason that He was about to recall Lazarus out of Limbo…from the haven and state of peace, to the storms, dangers, and sufferings of this life.”
Jesus is primarily perturbed (love that word) because of the lack of faith of the people.
Martha needs to be taught who the Son of Man is in verses 24-25 and His powers, which can be immediate rather than merely vague in the future.
Even Peter, who receives infused knowledge of Christ’s identity in the Synoptics (Mt 16:13–16; Mk 8:27–29; Lk 9:18–20), still messes it up just a few verses later, and Jesus rebukes him: Hupage opisō mou, Satana.
I reflected a bit on the connection between the 5th Station’s prayer from Alphonsus Ligouri’s Stations of the Cross and accepting the death God has for each of us.
Last Friday, after reading this prayer, I asked God: How are You going to take me out? The last time I really reflected on this, I was in the hospital and upset that there was a strong possibility I was going to die in an ugly hospital. It was so hard for me to wrap my head around my own mortality that all I could focus on was that my whole family wasn’t there, and I was in a terribly unflattering hospital gown. Will I be more prepared the next (and perhaps last) time God brings me back to death’s door?
“My beloved Jesus, I will not refuse the cross as Simon did: I accept and embrace it. I accept in particular the death that is destined for me with all the pains that may accompany it. I unite to Your death and I offer it to You. You have died for love of me; I will die for love of You and to please You. Help me by Your grace. I love You, Jesus, my Love; I repent of ever having offended You. Never let me offend You again. Grant that I may love You always; and then do with me as You will. Amen.”
Next week, we will be taking a look at the readings for Palm Sunday: Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; and the Gospel at the beginning of Mass, Matthew 21:1-11, because there is no way we’d be able to analyze the entire Passion narrative in one night.
Talk to you soon,
Ryleigh