Vigils Reading – SS Martha, Mary & Lazarus

OF THE FOUR DAYS OF LAZARUS

A sermon by St Bernard of Clairvaux7

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He who is our life hastens to a tomb to lead out of the tomb someone four days dead. He seeks Lazarus so he might be sought and found by him. In this is charity, not that we loved him, but that he first loved us. Come then, Lord, seek him whom you love, that you may make him love and seek you. Ask where they have laid him, for he lies captive, bound, and burdened…

But what of this: Lord, he now stinks, for it is the fourth day? Maybe someone doesn’t immediately get the meaning of this stinking and of these four days. I think the first day is the day of fear. By its brilliance in our hearts we die to sin and, as it were, are buried in our conscience. The second day, if I am not mistaken, is spent in strife. It is usually true that in the first stages of conversion, temptation to bad habits rises up more fiercely, and the fiery darts of the devil cannot easily be extinguished. The third seems to be one of grief, when a person looks back upon his life in bitterness of soul and does not so much work for a change of direction in the future as bewail a lamentable past.

Are you surprised that I call these days? But such as these are destined for the grave, days of mist and darkness, days of grief and bitterness. There follows a day of shame, not unlike the other three, when the pitiful soul is covered in dreadful confusion while it looks unceasingly at its sins, considering their nature and magnitude, and under the gaze of the heart it keeps mulling over the disgraceful images of its sins. A soul of this kind doesn’t dissemble but judges; it piles up everything…

Therefore, Lazarus, come forth. Deep calls to deep, the deep of light and pity, the deep of misery and darkness. His goodness is greater than your iniquity, and where there is abundance of sin, he gives abundance of grace. Lazarus, come forth, he says. And if he were to speak more openly, he would say “How long will the darkness of your conscience hold you back? How long will you weep in your bed with a heavy heart? Come forth, advance, breathe freely of the light of my pity.” This is what you read in the prophet: For my praise I restrained my mouth from you, lest you perish. Another prophet spoke of himself more clearly: My soul is troubled within me; therefore I will remember you.”…

The prophet sings more plainly in the Psalms about this raising of Lazarus, you will not leave my soul in hell, because, as I remember I said on the second day of the observance of this feast, the consciousness of a guilty mind is an imprisoning hell. You will not leave your holy one — not a holiness that is his own, obviously, but yours, the one you yourself make holy — to see corruption. Indeed the fourth day is near to corruption, for he began to stink.

He was approaching complete decay and entering the abyss of evil where the impious reviles. But when the powerful voice comes and he is brought back to life by it, he gives thanks, saying, you have shown me the path of life, you have filled me with joy in your presence. You have called me to contemplate it; you have led my soul out of the depths while my spirit within me was troubled by seeing the dreadful face of my conscience. He called with a loud voice, says the gospel, Lazarus, come forth: in a loud voice surely filled not so much with sound as with piety and great strength