Clergy Reflection: Thursday Of The Sixth Week

Thursday of the Sixth Week

Be glad, O Bethany: for Christ shall come to you, performing in you a great and fearful miracle. Binding death with fetters, as God of all He will raise up Lazarus, who was dead and now magnifies the Creator (Orthros, Tuesday 6th Week). During this week we follow our Lord as he delays across the Jordan, waiting for Lazarus to die. He will then go and call him out of the grave in order to show His disciples that He has power over death. They are going to need this reassurance when they see Him dying on the cross. He shows himself ahead of time as the victor over death. The Church takes us through these events because, when we are im- mersed in the temptations of the world, like the disciples, we need to know that Christ has already won the victory, and, like Lazarus, we already share in that victory.

Fr. Constantine Newman