Father Martin: Jesus calls us forth from the grave

By Andrea Tornielli

American Jesuit Father James Martin is the author of Come Forth: The Raising of Lazarus and the Promise of Jesus’s Greatest Miracle, a book dedicated to the figure of Lazarus, brother of Martha and Mary and friend of Jesus, who often stayed in the home of the three siblings in Bethany. Jesus’ raising of Lazarus is the story of a great miracle. We spoke with Fr Martin in the studios of Vatican Radio.

Interview with Fr James Martin, SJ

Andrea Tornielli: Where did your interest in Lazarus come from?

Fr. James Martin: Well, it starts actually with an Italian director, Franco Zeffirelli. When I was a young man, I saw “Jesus of Nazareth,” his famous movie. And really, the most dramatic scene in that whole picture is not the raising of Jesus, which you don’t see on camera, but the raising of Lazarus. And you have a shot of a man coming out of a tomb, and the orchestral music plays and everyone falls to their knees. And it made me think, who is this person? Who is this Lazarus? Why do I not know much about him? Who are these sisters that come up to be very blunt with Jesus? And so that started me on a kind of lifelong quest to understand who this man was.

You have been to the places where the Gospel events happened. How important is the awareness that the Gospel is not a theory or a novel, but is something that happened at a specific time in our history, in a specific place?

Theologians call that the scandal of particularity, that the Gospels happened in a particular time with the particular place, and with particular people. And when you go to the places where the Gospel passages happened, you get a better sense of the story.

And so it was very important for me to go to the tomb of Lazarus. And [it was] also a very moving spiritual experience, the first time I went there in Bethany, the tomb. I went down into the tomb, which is a very dark and wet cavity. And I thought, “What am I going to pray about here?” And I used some Ignatian contemplation and said, “I can pray about what kinds of things I want to leave behind in the tomb, what kinds of things make me unfree or bound or enslaved. And how can I hear God’s voice inviting me out into the into the fresh air?” And I found that very powerful. And then when I subsequently took pilgrims to that same place and invited them to do that same meditation – “What can we leave behind in the tomb?” – a lot of them came out of the tomb crying. And so I thought, this really says something to people. And that’s what led to led to the book. I thought, I really have to write about this because of my experience and also other people’s experiences, but it was important for them to be there in that place. And that’s what I tried to describe to the reader.

When visiting the Holy Land one of the most moving experiences is to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Jesus' Resurrection is a unique event; He was truly man, but He was also God. That Resurrection affects us all, because we believe that we will rise again and live forever. In the case of Lazarus, however, we have the return to life of a man who had been dead for four days. Jesus gave him a new chance at life…

Lazarus’ story is really all of our stories, which is that Jesus or God calls to us every moment of the day and asks us to come forth and [calls us] to new life, to leave behind anything that keeps us unfree. It’s easier for us to relate to Lazarus than it is for us to relate to Jesus.

I think also there’s a wonderful parallel that I point out in my book that I think comes from the theologian Raymond Brown. When Jesus comes out of the tomb on Easter Sunday, He leaves His grave clothes and His head covering behind. So we remember when Peter and Mary Magdalene and the beloved disciple look into the tomb, they see the grave clothes all rolled up. He’s not going to need them again. When Lazarus comes out of his tomb, he’s wearing his grave clothes and his head covering. He’s going to need them again because he’s going to die again.

Another peculiarity of this miracle is that we know the name of the risen man, while we do not know the name of the son of the widow of Naim or the daughter of Jairus. With Lazarus, we know his name, we know who his family was and where he lived. What is the significance of this?

New Testament scholars say that when we know the name of a person apart from the twelve apostles, it’s because those people were known to the early Church. It’s interesting that we have stories about Martha and Mary in Luke’s Gospel. Martha is the active one. Mary is contemplative. And in John’s gospel, in the story of Lazarus, Martha, what does she do? She rushes out first to see Jesus, and Mary stays at home. So their personalities really shine through in both of the Gospels, which again is a sign of their reality and their historicity.

An important aspect of Jesuit spirituality, which we also see reflected in Pope Francis’ homilies, is immersion in Gospel scenes. How important is it to enter into the Gospel in that way?

That’s a very Jesuit way of praying. We’re not the only ones that pray that way. You could say it began with Francis of Assisi, with the creche and kind of imagining yourself in the scene. It’s a way of placing yourself imaginatively in the gospel passage. And so when you imagine yourself in the Gospel passage, you pray about it, you picture yourself in it, and then you say to yourself, what is coming up to me in my prayer? What insights, emotions, memories, desires, even words and phrases are coming up?

When I was a Jesuit novice, my spiritual director said, “Now I’m going to teach you the Jesuit way of praying.” And he explained this way of imagining yourself in Scripture. And I said, “Aren’t you just making things up in your mind?” And I was very suspicious. And he said, “Well, let me ask you a question. He said, do you think God works through the Sacraments? Do you think God works through nature and music? Do you think God works through relationships?” I said, “Sure.” “Why can’t God work through your imagination?” I thought that was very freeing, that God can use your imagination to help you encounter God more closely. And I think people find it a very natural way of praying. I sometimes say, when you’re listening to a Gospel passage in church, you’re imagining it already. Or when you’re listening to a parable, you’re imagining what it looks like when the prodigal son comes back. So it’s very natural and very human.

And we also need, in a sense, to make it our own. So when I pray about the story of Lazarus, something different might come up and it makes the Gospel much more personal, and you may notice something that you’ve never noticed before, the living word. And so you’re also going to notice different things at different times in your life.

Imagination is not fantasy. We are not doing a flight of the mind. We have a precise text, precise words. A scene already described. We have to make it our own, make it happen for us in the present…

Yes, and it’s also to trust that the Holy Spirit is at work. So this is different than reading the Lord of the Rings or another novel that you like [or] a fantasy novel, because you trust that with the Bible, the Holy Spirit is going to open it up for you.

I’ll tell you a funny story. A few years ago, I was interviewing Cardinal Dolan on the radio. Or rather, he was interviewing me for his radio show, and he talked about an experience that he had when he was praying with the nativity scene, and a Jesuit spiritual director asked him to enter into it imaginatively. And it was the first time he had done this. And he imagined Mary giving him the infant Jesus, and that he was holding the baby Jesus. And I said to him, “I bet the next time you read that, and the next time you heard that, it felt different.” And he said, “Exactly.” So it changes the way we encounter the Gospels. It’s personalizing it through the Spirit, which is very beautiful.

So we need books like the one you’ve written. We need to rediscover this great miracle that took place. That is the hope for us and for our eternal life.

There are two ways of looking at this story. At least. One is to believe that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. So it’s a kind of theological reading: I believe that Jesus offers people life, and I believe that He will offer me life.

But then there’s a kind of spiritual way of reading it, which is to say, “What does this story that took place 2000 years ago that I believe in mean for me and my everyday life?” Again, it is this idea that anything that keeps us from hearing God’s word more freely is to be left behind in the tomb in order that we can go on to new life. And so really, every moment of the day is trying to hear God say to us, “Vieni fuori” [Come forth].

There are no situations, no sins, no corruption we are locked up in that grace cannot penetrate. There are no situations where Jesus’ gaze cannot change something. Is this the message of the Gospel passage described in the book?

There’s also nothing that stinks that Jesus does not want to look at. So one of the great parts of the story, when Jesus comes to the tomb and says, “Take away the stone.” Martha says, “There will be a stench.” And I like to remind people that there are so many things in us that we think are rotten or stinky or smelly or whatever word you want to use that we’re embarrassed to show Jesus. We’re embarrassed to bring it up in prayer. We’re embarrassed to bring it up in confession. We’re embarrassed to bring it up to spiritual directors. But He’s not afraid of that stench. He’s not afraid of us taking away the stone and for Him to face that, He’s not afraid of that at all. And I think we have to really trust that.

This interview with Fr James Martin, SJ, has been edited for length and clarity.