The raising of Lazarus in John 11 is one of the most momentous occasions in the Gospels. Today we’ll explore what it tells us about the Christian faith and about our belief in the Resurrection.
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• Looking for Lazarus: A Preview of the Resurrection
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Transcript:
Eric Sammons:
The raising of Lazarus is one of the most momentous occasions in the gospels. Today, we’re going to explore what it tells us about the Christian faith and about our belief in the resurrection here on Crisis Point. Hello, I’m Eric Sammons, your host and editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine. Before I get started, just want to encourage people to like and subscribe to the channel wherever you watch it, wherever you listen to it. Follow us on social media, @crisismag. We’re on all the major social medias. Also, if you can donate to Crisis Magazine, just go to crisismagazine.com/support.
I’m real excited about our guest today. He’s a regular writer for Crisis Magazine, Dr. Regis Martin. He’s a professor of dogmatic and systematic theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He’s actually my former professor as well. He is a regular panelist on the EWTN show, Franciscan University Presents, and he’s the author of numerous books, which are all great. Although I have to admit, I haven’t read them all, but I have read some of them. Including his most recent, Looking for Lazarus: A Preview of the Resurrection from Scepter Publishers. Welcome to the program, Dr. Martin.
Dr. Regis Martin:
Well, thank you. I’m delighted to be with you. My best books are the ones nobody’s read.
Eric Sammons:
That’s right. Exactly. I remember your book on the four last things. That’s the one I think is my favorite and I think that’s from a while ago, but I love that one.
Dr. Regis Martin:
It has been a while.
Eric Sammons:
That was a great one. But this is a great little book too. Like I said, called Looking for Lazarus. And I think it’s very appropriate we’re talking about this in the Easter time, because obviously talking about the resurrection. Before we get really into it though, why don’t you just give us a little bit of your background as far as maybe how long you’ve been teaching? Did you grow up Catholic? Things of that nature.
Dr. Regis Martin:
Yeah, I’ve always been a Catholic, I’m a cradle Catholic, unlike most of my colleagues who are converts and far more zealous than I am. And I grew up only about 40 minutes from here in a little suburb of Pittsburgh called Mount Lebanon. And we came on board in 1988. We came directly from Rome. And Steubenville was so obscure that I had to ask directions on where exactly this place is. And I had only grown up less than, I don’t know, 40 minutes away. And it was a bit of an adjustment, somewhat traumatizing to go from St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome to Christ the King Chapel on campus, which is, let’s face it, pretty hideous.
Eric Sammons:
But those who have been to Steubenville, we feel your lament. My kids, I warned them about it before they went off to school and they’re not happy with it either, but I’m sure that was quite an adjustment.
Dr. Regis Martin:
But life is meant to be penitential. So one has a sharpened sense of the penitential life when you spend it here in Steubenville.
Eric Sammons:
Yes. That very true. What’s your main focus as you’re a professor of dogmatic and systematic theology? What would you say is probably the main focus of your teaching has been over the years at Steubenville?
Dr. Regis Martin:
Well, I have a consuming interest in theology and especially the basic courses, the dogmatic of courses, Trinity, Christology, a theology of grace of the church, sacraments, the last things. I teach everything except scripture and I no longer teach moral theology because, I suppose, my superiors have adjudged me to be less than moral, but I do the systematic track and I’m pretty passionate about it.
Eric Sammons:
Very good. Yes. Excellent. Anybody who ends up going to Steubenville, definitely recommend trying to find one of your classes to attend. I think I had you for church history though, which is a little bit outside of that.
Dr. Regis Martin:
Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I hope you survived.
Eric Sammons:
I know nothing that’s ever happened in church history, but hey. I’m just kidding.Okay. So let’s talk about this book. Why’d you even decide to write this book?
Dr. Regis Martin:
Well, years ago, I had a sabbatical and I remember turning to my wife and saying, “I think I’d like to write a book about love.” And she said, “You’re not wise enough to do that. Maybe write a book about death.” And since I already had a pretty lively interest in death, I turned to the subject and that produced the one book that you can remember, the last things, death, judgment, heaven, and hell. But I’m also interested in Lazarus. This is a pretty fascinating guy. His story is second in length to that of the Passion itself. And it is a prelude to our Lord’s resurrection. And Lazarus is every man, we’re all condemned to die and we hope that there may be something on the other side, and Lazarus found out, and then he came back. But the interesting thing is he had nothing to say when he returned to planet earth, he was about as silent as a stone, but nevertheless, what Jesus did for him is pretty amazing, extraordinary. And I thought that was a story worth telling.
Eric Sammons:
Now, I’d recommend, by the way, for viewers, listeners that they would read John chapter 11. Maybe pause this right now, go back and read John chapter 11 where we have the story of Lazarus being raised. And as Dr. Martin mentioned, it’s one of the longer stories. The gospels, if nothing else, are concise in almost everything. They give only the bare details. But this story actually has more details. So why don’t you present to us the context of what’s happening here? Who’s Lazarus? Mary and Martha are mentioned, what’s the context that leads us into this story?
Dr. Regis Martin:
Well, these three whose names you’ve just mentioned, Lazarus, Mary and Martha are siblings. And they’re among the dearest friends that Jesus knows. And when word gets out that Lazarus is dead or about to die, Martha sends word to Jesus, “You need to come and help us here. Why can’t you raise him, save him, rescue him? You’ve got all of these miracles under your belt, here would be another shot at doing something really spectacular.” And the astonishing thing is Jesus doesn’t come straight away. He waits a few days. And by the time he does arrive, Lazarus is thoroughly dead. And Martha reproaches him, along the way she accosts him outside the house and says, “If you had only been here, my brother would be alive.” And Jesus says, “Well, that’s probably true, but I assure you he will come back to life. The dead shall live again. If you believe in me, even though you die, you won’t stay dead. Resurrection is the last word.”
And then he raises him from the dead, but this is four days after poor Lazarus has gone into the tomb, so you can imagine the stench and the squalor that surround this decomposing body. And yet Jesus walks right in to that tomb and speaks those affirming words, “Lazarus, get up. Lazarus, come out. I am the resurrection and the life.” And it would’ve been nice to have been a fly on that wall to observe that particular miracle, because it was really over the top. It changes everything.
Eric Sammons:
And let me take a step back for a second. I just want to think about Martha for a second. I just would love to have known her because she just seems the type… Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but the stereotypical, almost Jewish mother thing where she just is like, “Well, you could have done this. Why didn’t you do it? I told you.”
Dr. Regis Martin:
I think a friendship with Martha would’ve been very productive because you could always count on a good sandwich. She would cook a nice meal for you and ensure that you had optimum comfort. Unlike Mary, who’s lost in prayer, this contemplative swoon at the feet of Jesus, she doesn’t have time even to set the table. And Martha has to reprimand her and ask Jesus, “Won’t you scold my sister who won’t help out in the kitchen?” Martha is the practical one and she represents that side of the church that is bent on getting things done. She’s an activist of the right sort and just the sort of woman to intervene on behalf of her brother. But the striking thing is it doesn’t do any good because Jesus allows Lazarus to die anyway.
Eric Sammons:
And it’s because of Martha almost harassing Jesus that he says one of the most important lines. He says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” And what I think is striking about that, he doesn’t say, “I bring about resurrection. I raise people or I bring about life.” He says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” And how should we see those words of our Lord’s?
Dr. Regis Martin:
Well, they’re wonderfully reminiscent of another pronouncement that Jesus makes at the very beginning of his public ministry when he pretty much says the kingdom of God is here in your midst. And he’s really pointing to himself. It’s not some principle out there. It’s not some extrinsic project that maybe together we can work to bring about, I am the kingdom, the in breaking of the kingdom is here now in this flesh. And so when he goes on to tell Martha, “Look, I am the resurrection and the life, that’s pretty astounding. That’s horizon chattering.” No human being has ever said anything remotely like that. Even the Buddha doesn’t point to himself and say, “Look, you have to worship me because I’m the way, the truth and the life.” He points to something out there, and together we move in tandem to try to reach it. But Jesus scandalously declares himself to be the resurrection and the life. And I like how C. S. Lewis puts it, either he’s lying or he’s a lunatic, or in fact he is logos, the word of God, and we must heed his word.
Eric Sammons:
I think what’s amazing about this story is first we have him saying, “I am the resurrection in life.” And if it’s just a regular person saying this, like you said, they’re insane or they’re just lying, they’re a huckster, whatever. Yet, what also we see is the deeply human aspect of this. I remember reading Frank Sheed’s To Know Jesus Christ a while back and he talks about how if you really look at the gospels, Jesus doesn’t come across as really this nice person who praises people and it is attached to people, he comes off somewhat a little distant. Yet here, we have the passage where it says Jesus wept, and he’s clearly closely attached to Lazarus, to Mary and to Martha. He just said, “I’m in the resurrection and life,” then he says Jesus wept. How do we bring that all together?
Dr. Regis Martin:
It’s an astonishing conjunction. It’s what Joseph Ratzinger has called the staggering alliance of logos and sarx of God and man, heaven and history, time and eternity. The fact that God, the Alpha and the Omega, would break down and weep copiously for a human being is, I think, mind blowing, it’s unprecedented. And that’s one of the most endearing features I think of the story, one of the defining features of the humanity of Christ that he would shed to tears, that he would in fact evince that kind of tender regard and compassion for the creature. He’s really engaged. He’s invested everything in the human condition. And the fact that he weeped strikes a bond of solidarity. As Pope Francis puts it, he allows himself to experience a breach in his own heart so that he can feel our pain. He’s not distant or indifferent. He’s there, he’s in the moment. And what he experiences is so wonderfully, genuinely human that you can’t help but draw near to this figure who happens, at the same time, to be God. That’s the perfect combination.
Eric Sammons:
Another figure that’s in this story, we just read, last Sunday, the story of Thomas seeing our Lord after the resurrection saying, “My Lord, my God,” that’s what he is known for, doubting Thomas, all that. Here he makes one of these few appearances in this story when all of a sudden they know… Just to make sure people understand the context, this is happening shortly before the events of Holy Week. This is very close to our Lord’s passion. So this isn’t early in his public ministry, but in fact this brings about, in a lot of ways, his passion.
Dr. Regis Martin:
It’s a catalyzing moment, we’re right on the cusp of the great drama.
Eric Sammons:
Right. And I didn’t realize that for a long time. It wasn’t until I had been Catholic for a while that I realized that the rising of Lazarus happens right before. And it really brings about, and we’ll talk about that in a minute, about the Pharisees going after Jesus. But the apostles know if he goes down to Judea to heal or raise Lazarus, as the case may be, that there could be trouble because, of course, they’re working against it. But then Thomas says, “Let us go down and die with him.” And it’s this beautiful, it almost sounds like he’s Peter for a second like, “Hey, we’re going to do this,” but I think he’s probably sincere, and I just think that’s beautiful, but of course later he doesn’t go and die with our Lord. And what can we learn from Thomas’s role in all this?
Dr. Regis Martin:
Well, he exhibits the same brokenness as we all do, the same predicament, the same weakness of will, a vagrant heart and a vacuous head. The disciples, they just don’t get it. And that’s probably why Jesus allows Lazarus to decompose for four days in the grave, because they’re like children, they need to see it in order to believe. It can’t remain abstract or propositional. It has to be in your face. They have to see this dead man and watch Jesus go into the tomb after four days and bring him out alive, otherwise it’s just an abstraction, it’s too remote, too distant. And the fact that it happens so close to the events of Holy Week I think are not accidental. There are no accidents with God. He knows what he’s doing. He has orchestrated this scene, choreographed the entire cosmos for this precise moment, this moment of kairos, this moment of a still point breaking into the turning world, Jesus raises this dead man to new life as a foreshadowing of what the Father will do for him when he enters into the tomb, he’ll raise him up again, vindicate him.
Eric Sammons:
I admit, what I struggle to understand, I think a lot of people probably struggle to understand, is here Jesus does the most incredible miracle possible, other than raising himself, of course, is he raises somebody who’s clearly dead. In the other times he raises people, obviously we know in faith and we know he did raise them, but maybe some might say, “Well, they were just unconscious or something like that.” But here, the guy’s in the tomb for four days. Like you say, he is decomposing. How is it though that immediately following this, the Pharisees plot to kill him? How can you be so hard of heart that you don’t see that, oh my gosh, obviously I was wrong about this guy if he can raise people from the dead, yet they have the exact opposite reaction to that.
Dr. Regis Martin:
Well, in theology we speak of this category of sin called obduracy, which means the hardening of the heart against any tender feeling at all. And we see this on display with the Jews, the Pharisees, despite the evidence of their eyes, that Jesus is this miracle worker. They still shrink from any identification with him. They insist that this man is blaspheming and he has to be executed despite the clear evidence that he’s a good man, that he’s not out for himself, everything he does is pursuant to the will of the Father. He is subservient to the Father. He speaks the Father’s name. He only wants to execute the Father’s will and bring good to the world. And yet they are appalled by this, dismayed, and they organized, they mobilize against him. It testifies, I think, to the extent to which sin can hold us in its grip, its power, and all the more reason why Jesus has to enter into that sin as the purely innocent one and somehow burn it up in the fire of his own divine love. Sin has to be destroyed, broken in two.
Eric Sammons:
Another thing about this passage is something related… Most Catholics are familiar with Matthew 16, where Peter makes his confession of fate, says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And of course we know that is a foundational text for the papacy and Peter’s role. Yet in John, we don’t hear Peter saying that, we hear Martha actually saying that. She’s the one who said that… Let me make sure I get the passage right..in response to him saying I’m the resurrection of life, says, “Do you believe this?” She says, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God who is coming into the world.” All the gospels have this confession of Jesus by somebody as the Christ, but it’s Martha in this case. Now, obviously we don’t think that Martha’s the first Pope, but what does this tell us about Martha’s role in this confession of faith here?
Dr. Regis Martin:
Well, it’s every bit as striking as the presence of Mary Magdalene, Easter Sunday morning, she’s the first to give witness to the risen Lord and she’s not an apostle, she’s not going to be ordained, she doesn’t have any pretensions to be coming a bishop or a cardinal or a pope any more than Catherine of Sienna wanted to be any of that. But she is a prophet or a prophetess. She speaks the truth. And the fact that here is a broken read that can speak the truth makes, I think, the truth all the more compelling. God writing straight with crooked lines. Her lines are pretty crooked. And the fact that God can straighten her out with grace, I think is a wonderful testimony to the efficacy of his grace, his power.
Eric Sammons:
Now, what is the connection? We’re we’re in Easter time, we’re thinking resurrection, now, of course, Jesus, he rose from the dad. And when he rose from the dead, he did it under his own power, but also he got a glorified body and he continues to have that body. That’s not what happened to Lazarus, of course. He did rise from the dead, but then his body, from all indications, was just like it was before he died, maybe a little healthier, I don’t know, whatever it was that killed him obviously went away, but now he’s going to die again, and so [crosstalk 00:20:13]
Dr. Regis Martin:
He’s borrowed time.
Eric Sammons:
Right. [crosstalk 00:20:16]
Dr. Regis Martin:
It is instructive. He doesn’t come back transfigured, glorified, it’s as if the time he spent in the place of death meant nothing to him because when he returns, he has nothing to say, not the least insight into the world beyond the wardrobe, as C. S. Lewis describes it in the Chronicles of Narnia, he has no sense of what heaven might be like. Obviously he didn’t go there, because if he had, it would’ve been a cruel wrenching to drag him back onto planet earth. But he does return to the body and the body is somehow restored, but he’s living on borrowed time. In a way, it’s a double whammy. The poor guy dies once and then he’s got to die twice. But in between, he’s lifted out of this place of death and given a fresh start, but he has nothing to offer, nothing to impart.
I quote the English Dominican, Gerald Vann, who speculates that Lazarus probably had to be told by his sister, Martha, to get on with his food because he is so abstracted, so disjointed because of these events. He’s mulling them over and he’s not quite in the real world yet, he’s visiting from another planet, and maybe he yearns for that moment when he can go back forever and be with Jesus on the other side of death. So he’s very much like us.
Eric Sammons:
You wonder also is it possible that he went to that area of Hades where the Old Testament righteous were that Jesus, of course, on Holy Saturday went down to, and you wonder if maybe Moses and Elijah were telling him, “Hey, guess what? We’re going to have good news here soon.” Maybe Lazarus too will say, “I think I know something.”
Dr. Regis Martin:
None of that is de fide, but it really does, I think, have a certain persuasive quality to it. He’s in a suspended state, limbo, a vestibule of eternity and like the other upright Jews and good pagans, I hope maybe Aristotle and Plato are down there. They’re waiting for something they don’t yet have, but they have hope, at least some of them do, and when Jesus enters into that place, what we call the harrowing of hell, he literally beats the hell out of the strong man, he grapples and wrestles him to the ground and makes him submit because Jesus is Lord of life and death. He vanquishes death. So he gathers up the dead, the good souls and returns them to… Well, not returns. He resurrects them and they now experience the fullness of life.
Eric Sammons:
And you wonder if that’s the case, what happened to Lazarus during those four days. How do you go back to your job after that? I don’t think that’s easy.
Dr. Regis Martin:
I think you want to go on a extended holiday. I need some time to think about this, to process these events. But it could be that when he’s returned to his body, he has no recollection of where his soul spent that interim, those four days. What was I doing? Maybe that was a grace, a mercy that God gave him so that he would come back an empty piece of paper.
Eric Sammons:
Now the subtitle of the book is A Preview of the Resurrection, because as we’ve been talking about, Lazarus rising from dead is not the same as Christ’s resurrection. But how exactly then does the story of Lazarus, how does it point into Christ’s resurrection and, even more so, our resurrection one day on the last day?
Dr. Regis Martin:
Well, it’s the difference between a postcard of some place that you long to visit and the place itself, which will turn out to be blessedly better than the postcard, but the postcard represents an intimation, a hint, a guess of what’s coming, a sneak preview, if you like. It wets the appetite for more. And the more is something unimaginably glorious and splendid. If you and I could picture in advance what paradise would be like, then we would somehow be in paradise. Somehow the master of it, maybe we were the ones who fashioned that castle on the other side of history. But no, it’s got to take us by surprise. It’s an ambush. It will be unbelievably glorious. And in a way, if you don’t go to heaven and you end up in hell, because you carry yourself off to a place of your own, it will be unbelievably worse than you could possibly imagine in your worst nightmare.
Eric Sammons:
It makes me think a little bit of at the end of Chronicles of Narnia where the children, they go to what appears… They’re going towards, beyond, they keep saying about beyond, and it reminds him of England, but it’s better, it’s more, it’s bigger, it’s brighter, everything about it is better and they keep going deeper and deeper into it, and it just keeps getting better and better and better as they go deeper, but yet it’s still England in their mind because it’s home.
Dr. Regis Martin:
There’s a line in T. S. Eliot it about having lost the meaning and the return to the experience somehow restores the meaning in its original form. Chesterton speaks of this at the beginning of Orthodoxy. He imagines himself like that English yachtsman who set out to explore New South Wales, and he ends up in old South Wales. The boat never gets beyond England, and then he rediscovers his own island as if he had never seen it before. I think that’s the kind of vision that we need to cultivate, an openness, a transference, it’s one of the beatitudes, blessed are the poor in spirit because they will then see with the eyes of a child the reality that even now remains obscure.
Eric Sammons:
I think for a lot of Catholics, it’s easy for us in our spiritual lives to focus on Lent, focus on the Passion, obviously traditionally that’s always been a major focus of Catholic spirituality, is the Passion. And obviously I’m not saying anything wrong with that, but I think it’s harder. At least I know this for me, and I’ve talked to other people like this, it’s harder, it’s almost like you go through Lent and everything’s, okay, this is great, I can focus on how sinful I am, on the sufferings of Christ. Then you get into Easter, and I feel sometimes like what do I do now with my prayer? How do I focus on the resurrection? How does that help me draw closer to God? Do you have any recommendations based on this reading or just in general how the resurrection can inform our spiritual lives?
Dr. Regis Martin:
Well, it’s a challenge. You’ve got to spend 50 days celebrating. It’s hard to sustain that kind of ecstasis, that kind of excitement of… It’s the honeymoon, it goes on and on and on. And I don’t know that you can really sustain it because you’re still in the body and the body is broken. We live in a falling world. We’re not going to make it like paradise anytime soon. And those who think otherwise are not only dreamers, but dangerous dreamers, and they’re tempted I think by ideology. They want to immanentize the eschaton, take paradise and somehow plant it right in the square of downtown Steubenville. You can’t pull that off. You have to live in the flesh and you live in a veil of tears, but you have this sense that so much more has been offered. And this glimpse of getting it eventually in the events that we celebrate, commemorate every year in the church’s calendar, every Sunday, in fact, is meant to be a little Easter.
Eric Sammons:
I guess it’s more a matter of in our spiritual lives we’re looking forward towards the goal, this is what we’re doing it for, this is why we’re going through Lent, is it remind that we have a reason. We’re not just doing it as some masochistic idea of trying to get stronger or whatever, but it’s more a matter of the goal is union with Christ in the resurrection.
Dr. Regis Martin:
I was saying, Catherine of Sienna has a wonderful line, a lapidary reminder to us that all the way to heaven is heaven, because Christ said, “I am the way.” So when you get to heaven, it’s not a recompense for having put up with planet earth, it is earth itself, but transfigured, transformed, a new heaven, a new earth, and you get your body back so it’s recognizably the one you’ve got now, but it is so utterly transfigured that you might scarcely recognize it, given the perfection that awaits you on the other side. But you have to remember, it is the body God gave you, he didn’t make a mistake.
You thought maybe you would get somebody else’s body, but no, it’s your body and you need to cherish it. We believe in the resurrection of the body, not just the resurrection of the dead, we’re not spirits. So in a sense, even those who have gone home to God are incomplete because they don’t yet have their bodies and they may not yet have all of their friends, their loved ones, it’s going to be a reunion, a banquet in heaven, and everybody will be there, everybody who wants to be there.
Eric Sammons:
And it’s interesting to think about the fact that Lazarus right now does not have his body, because when he died and went to heaven he’s still waiting for his glorified body like the rest of us, but I guess he’ll have some better stories to tell perhaps than the rest of us. So is there anything else from this passage that we haven’t really covered that really we can bring out as Catholics? Obviously I recommend people get the book, read it, Looking for Lazarus, but is there anything else you might want to share with us that we can really tease out of this that can help in our life here?
Dr. Regis Martin:
Sure. There are a couple of things that I think were hinted at in the conversation, but in the epilogue, I try to highlight them with greater clarity and cogency, and the one is the fact that Jesus weeps. That’s unmistakable evidence of his humanity, his intense, intimate involvement with the human heart, the human condition. He cares about us. He’s entered that fully into the human world, a human estate. And the second thing that I take away from the story is the fact that when he goes into that tomb, he goes all the way in, he’s not the least bit put off or inhibited or daunted by the dread face of death, the corruption, the decomposition, the stench, the squalor, none of that discourages him and it becomes a metaphor, I think, for those dark places in our own lives, our own hearts, which we need to invite Jesus into to explore and redeem.
The church fathers would often say, “What he did not assume he could not redeem.” He assumed even this, not just our death, but our being dead. I think that’s the great meaning of the Shroud of Turin. There’s a beautiful reflection by Pope Benedict on that, in which he tells us here is a sign of the deepest possible solidarity between God and man. Not simply the fact that he died, but that he entered into the state of being dead, which, as it were, means he went to hell. Because until he rose from the grave, simply in virtue of dying you would go to a place of darkness where there is no God, even if you had some kind of hope that somehow he would come and deliver you, at least not yet, you have to wait. And to wait is, I think, a great challenge, you require the virtue of hope and courage and patience. He’s not there, I’m not yet there, but I wait in hope for that final trump, that final consummation. I take that from the story of Lazarus.
Eric Sammons:
And I think it’s interesting because it’s almost in a sense it’s not just a preview of the resurrection of Easter, but it’s a preview of Holy Saturday as well. I have the icon right up here of the Haring of hell, the idea that there’s literally nowhere that Jesus has not gone in our human existence, our human experience.
Dr. Regis Martin:
He has redeemed everything. I know. Yeah.
Eric Sammons:
The deepest depth of our darkness, no matter where you are, he has gone there and he has been there.
Dr. Regis Martin:
And that provides, I think, the most profound consolation possible, that here is a God who is so committed to me, to us, that he has entered into the darkest aspects of our lives. Nothing is alien to God. And if he enters into it, then he’s able to confer meaning and purpose. Your suffering has a value.
Eric Sammons:
Well, I think that’s a good place to really end it. I want to recommend to people, a couple things. First of all, read John 11, really meditate upon it, but this is a great help for it because basically what this book does, Looking for Lazarus, as you can tell from here, it’s basically almost a booklet in a sense and it goes through each chapter. It just goes through the passages. It’s perfect for meditation. You can take one passage of your Lectio Divina each day, go through the meditation, and I think it’s a great way to really contemplate all these things. So, I thank you for writing it. I know it’s helped me a lot.
Dr. Regis Martin:
Thank you saying that, but I had good material, didn’t I?
Eric Sammons:
Exactly. That’s right
Dr. Regis Martin:
On chapter 11. It’s hard to improve upon that.
Eric Sammons:
That’s right. St. John knows what he is doing when he was writing. Okay. Well, thank you very much. I will link to the book in the show notes so people can easily know where to buy it. Thank you, Dr. Martin. I appreciate it, and thanks for being on the show.
Dr. Regis Martin:
It was an honor. God bless you. Thanks, Eric.
Eric Sammons:
God bless you. And everybody else, until next time, God love you.
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