Daily Mass Gospel Reflection - Confronting Death

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 7-29-2021 | Aux. Bishop R. Barron

[MurphsLaw]

MEMORIAL OF SAINTS MARTHA, MARY, AND LAZARUS

JOHN 11:19-27

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever is believing in me, even if he dies, will live, and anyone who lives and is believing in me will never die.”

Jesus came primarily as a warrior whose final enemy is death. It is easy to domesticate Jesus, presenting him as a kindly moral teacher. But that is not how the Gospels present him. He is a cosmic warrior who has come to do battle with those forces that keep us from being fully alive.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus deals with the effects of death and a death-obsessed culture: violence, hatred, egotism, exclusion, false religion, phony community. But the final enemy he must face down is death itself. Like Frodo going into Mordor, he has to go into death’s domain, get into close quarters with it, and take it on.

Coming to Lazarus’ tomb, Jesus feels the deepest emotions and begins to weep. This is God entering into the darkness, confusion, and agony of the death of sinners. He doesn’t blithely stand above our situation, but rather takes it on and feels it at its deepest level.

[MurphsLaw]

+++Jesus told her,
“I am the resurrection and the life;
whoever is believing in me, even if he dies, will live,
and anyone who lives and is believing 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.”+++

[Marchmain]

I don’t think God has feelings per se. Jesus is a human being, and felt emotion as part of his brain chemistry like all humans.

[MurphsLaw]

While I can agree that we cannot transfer our emotional state onto God- and that "Love" in certain senses is not a sentimental emotion...

"For God so Loved the World..." could be evidence whete we are created with some qualities in his image....
And we cant forget the Old Timey Word...."God is a jealous God, slow to anger....etc..."
So that may be what is being expressed...