Main news for 24 March 2026

Jesus' raising of Lazarus is described in unusual detail. The evangelist seems deliberately to set it apart from other miraculous events like it, whether healings or raisings. What is described here is indeed something extraordinary. Even the raising of Jairus's daughter was not like the raising of Lazarus. There, death had still only just touched a person. Here, its complete and obvious triumph has already occurred. So complete that people even want to stop Jesus when He is about to enter the tomb, because it is already too late and useless. Nothing can be done anymore, and entering the tomb means becoming unclean, in this case with no need at all.

But He knows what He is doing. He knows what He lives by and what He carries within Himself. And He knows that the Kingdom is stronger than death, that there in the Kingdom there is simply no place for death. And Lazarus, coming into contact with the Kingdom, rises. Death retreats, just as it will in due time retreat from Him Himself on the day of His Resurrection. Here everything depends on the life by which a person lives. If it is the life of the Kingdom, to the end and in fullness, then there is no death for that person. If it is the life of the old world, not yet transformed by the breath of God, then death is inevitable. So it is with Lazarus: he lost the life of this world that he had. Death conquered, as it always conquers what this world calls life but what in fact turns out to be something between life in its fullness and death. But Jesus brought him another life, the life by which He Himself lives. In this life there is no place for death, and Lazarus rises. He returns to life.

Of course, not to the fullness of the life of the Kingdom that the Savior carries within Himself. Death retreats before the Kingdom, but a person contains only as much life as he is able to contain. Lazarus returned to that relative fullness of earthly life that was accessible to him, and in that sense he remained the same. Even contact with the Kingdom does not change a person by itself, without that person's participation. But the experience of such contact remains with a person forever. In this sense, Lazarus certainly changed and could no longer become what he had been before. The evangelist tells us nothing about this man's later fate. What happened to him afterward, after the Resurrection and after Pentecost, can only be wondered about. But what is said is enough to understand: the Kingdom truly entered the world. Not yet in all its fullness, but finally and irreversibly.