Newsletter Fifth Sunday of Lent / Sunday March 22nd, 2026

5th Sunday of Lent

As we walk the middle of our Lenten pilgrimage, the Gospel invites us to linger at the foot of a tomb that has been    shrouded in silence for four long days. In today’s reading (John 11:1‑45) we meet a family torn between hope and       hopelessness, friends who hover on the edge of despair, and a Jesus who, in the quiet of night, declares, 

“I am the resurrection and the life.”

· Lazarus’s story is familiar to anyone who has ever watched a loved one suffer through illness, a job loss, or the     crushing weight of loneliness. In the pandemic years, many of us felt that the world was “dead” — churches empty, streets hushed, relationships reduced to screen‑savers and Zoom windows.

· In the Gospel, “the Jews had been telling Jesus, ‘He is not here; his brother has died.’” The certainty of death         surrounded Lazarus, just as uncertainty surrounds our modern anxieties. Yet Jesus does not rush in with a grand       rescue; He pauses, weeps, and then waits—a reminder that God’s compassion often comes in the stillness we tend to rush through.

· Martha’s blunt question, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” rings with the frustration we feel when God seems distant. We, too, ask, “Why do you let this happen? Why do you stay silent?”

· Jesus answers, not with a theological treatise, but with an invitation: “I am the resurrection and the life.” He points us to the source, not the symptom. In the digital age, it’s easy to think that a new app, a fresh “like,” or a viral trend will fill the void. The Gospel tells us that true renewal comes not from the next notification but from the living Word that invites us into a relationship that transcends every ending.

· When Jesus shouts, “Lazarus, come out!”, the tomb’s stone is rolled away and the dead man rises, still wrapped in burial cloths. The miracle is spectacular, but the deeper mystery is that the resurrection is already at work in us when we let go of our own “burial cloths”—our pride, our fear, our complacency.