This is the first of my annual Twice-daily Commentaries on the Holy Week Services and their Scripture readings.
These are talks I gave for many years at Holy Week services at Saint Nicholas, Cedarburg, and now on this Blog for the last four years. If you’ve read them before, you won’t find much new here – though I “update” them a bit each year as I ponder and try to understand a little more. I’ll try to get them posted by the evening before morning services, and during the day before evening services. (I’ll try hard to be brief. Promise.)
Why does the Orthodox Church provides us with these multiple Holy Week services? Because this is a Divine Drama, and we need to know the whole plot. As with any drama, if we don’t arrive till the very end, it will be hard to understand what it’s all about.
Why these many Holy Week Posts? 1 Because we don’t live in the old Orthodox world. There everything pretty much shuts down for Holy Week, so people can get to church. Not here – not even for Western Holy Week, let alone ours. 2 Because so much happens this Week, and in its worship services, that it’s almost impossible to take it all in. In the years since I became Orthodox, preparing these talks has helped me begin to understand, for the first time, the events of Holy Week – why and how the Jewish authorities tried to “get Him”, how Masterfully Christ handled it (no surprise!), what He endured and why He chose to do it. I hope you find them helpful as well.
As we proceed, please read the appointed passages from the Scriptures. You can find the texts online from:
1 the Greek Archdiocese – https://www.goarch.org/chapel/
2 the Antiochian Archdiocese – https://www.antiochian.org/liturgicday Also, at the bottom of these pages you’ll find the full text of all the Holy Week services. (God bless those who put them online. That took a lot of effort.)
Please, as best you can, put other things aside and put some time into this Holy Week. You will be greatly blessed by it.
Lazarus Saturday Divine Liturgy
Be sure to listen to this hymn sung by the Boston Byzantine Choir. It is powerful.
from “Orthodox Christian Chants” site
Actually the Saturday of Lazarus is not Holy Week, which begins with Palm Sunday. But it is our “lead-in”, so to speak. I read that this was (and I guess still is) the day when hermits came out of their caves and huts and down from the hills, and joined the rest of the brothers for the celebration of this Blessed Week.
Epistle: Hebrews 12:28-29; 13:1-8
1 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.” Despite all that happens or ever will happen, His kingdom is unshakable. Not even death could destroy it.
2 “Let brotherly love continue.” “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus were hospitable to Jesus. When He was in the area He stayed at their house in Bethany, as He would during Holy Week. Little did they imagine they were entertaining God unawares!
Who knows what graces we turn away when we fail to be hospitable? (Consider something as simple as ignoring visitors at church.) If they had not been hospitable, friends of Jesus, would Lazarus have been raised?
Gospel: John 11:1-45
The raising of Lazarus took place actually some time before Palm Sunday, on a previous trip to Bethany. Christ was across the Jordan when messengers came from Mary and Martha saying, “Lord, He whom you love is ill.” Jesus waited before going to Judaea. His disciples were perplexed by this, though they did understand that His life would be in danger in Judaea, and Bethany was only two miles east of Jerusalem. When the Lord finally said He would go to Lazarus, Thomas cried, “Let us also go that we may die with Him”. He is no “doubting Thomas” here!
Icons by permission of Saint Isaac’s Skete at skete.com
When they arrived Lazarus had been dead and in the tomb four days. Custom was to bury the dead by sunset the day they died. Martha the ever-active one ran to meet him, with both faith and accusation. “Lord, if You had been here my brother would not have died.” I know You could have saved him. Why didn’t you? (Disappointment, even anger with God is often a sign of faith.) Jesus answered in words that have rung through the world ever since: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, he shall live. Whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”
“…shall never die.” The New Testament often speaks not of death but as falliíng asleep (kimissis, κίμισσις) That is what death is to the believer: we fall asleep on this side with Christ and wake up on the other, still with Christ.
Mary, the contemplative one, said the same as Martha: “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” And so with us: Christ has conquered death. He promised to be with us “to the end of the age”. So why does He still let us die? Why?
Jesus went to the tomb and saw them all weeping. John says He “groaned in spirit”. And then “Jesus wept”.
Only twice is it written that He wept. He wept at the tomb of Lazarus. And then soon again: “…when He drew near and saw the city, [Jerusalem] He wept over it.” Luke 10:41 What He had known would happen was finally happening: they were rejecting Him.
Why did Jesus weep? I think because He “so loved the world”, and the suffering and despair and hopelessness of mankind – today of Mary and Martha – was almost too much for Him to bear. Though soon He would bear it for us.
And I’ve always wondered, I don’t know but I’ve wondered, if He wept also for himself. He so loved the world He had made. Surely He loved being here, with His Mother, and sharing friendship and meals with His disciples whom He loved. He saw the anguish His death would cause them – and especially to her, for she alone knew Who He Is. And He saw before Him His 
departure, the inner agony that lay ahead of Him in Gethsemane, and then His death in the most excruciating way. Did He groan and weep over that too? Not out of despair, but because this was going to be hard, very hard. He would sweat blood in Gethsemane. For He was not only God; He was also Man, fully human. Sometimes people forget that.
“See how He loved him”, the people said. “Still groaning in Himself”, John says, He came to the tomb: “Take away the stone!” Martha said, “Lord, he has been there four days, there will be corruption, literally “a bad smell”. Jesus said, “Now you will see the glory of God.” He prayed. Then He cried, “Lazarus, come forth!”
Lazarus came out bound in his grave-clothes, his face wrapped in a cloth. “Loose him, let him go.” A sign, a prefiguring, an assurance of our general Resurrection at the end of the age
Tomb of Lazarus in Bethany, c 1895
After the Raising of Lazarus
Lazarus’ first tomb near Bethany (now called Al Eizaryia), is a place of pilgrimage to this day.
He then went to Cyprus where he started the first church and became bishop. His second tomb (how many have two tombs?) was long said to be at Larnaca on Cyprus. And sure enough in 890, it was discovered beneath Agios Lazaros (Saint Lazarus) Church there, bearing the inscription ”Lazaros four days dead, the Friend of Christ
Agios Lazaros Church, Larnaca today, by Johannes Grobe at Creative Commons
In 1972, during a renovation of the church, more of his relics were discovered beneath the altar. Lazarus – now waiting with us for the general resurrection.
Encompassed by Resurrection
So, as it turned out, the disciples experienced the first fearsome Holy Week surrounded by Resurrection – the raising of Lazarus earlier, and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ at the end, just as He had foretold them, “according to the Scriptures”.
The Church surrounds us with Resurrection:
Holy Week in church is dark, the raising of Lazarus is at the beginning, Christ’s Resurrection at the end.
All the Church’s weeks are encompassed by Christ’s Resurrection. Sunday after Sunday we celebrate it: At Saturday evening Vespers and Sunday Matins and Liturgy, the lead Troparion is always about the Resurrection. The Priest begins the blessing: “May Christ our true God, who has risen from the dead…”. If you want to hear a multitude of Resurrection hymns, on an eight week cycle, come regularly to Saturday Vespers and Sunday morning Matins.
And then, over and over during the forty days of Pascha we sing “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death….”
The Orthodox Church is the “Church of the Resurrection”.
And so we live our lives encompassed by Resurrection. Life can sometimes be dark like Holy Week, and unless Christ returns soon all of us will die like Lazarus.
But, so we will never forget or despair, the Church surrounds us with the Resurrection. We have a blessing that Martha and Mary and Lazarus and the Apostles and Christ’s Holy Mother did not have. He has shown us what is coming.
“Do not be amazed at this, for the time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice and come out.” John 5:29-30
At the End of all things you and I will hear His voice call out to us, as He called to Lazarus, “Come forth!” – and we also will see the glory of God.
Next Post: Saturday afternoon, for Vespers of Palm Sunday – Introduction to Holy Week.