Some pleasant afternoon a young man would come by for a visit when I was living among primitives², and chat for a while. Eventually he would get to the point and slip me a dollar bill. "I'd like to see my son. You fix it so I can." For, living alone as I did on a hill by the sea, rising at night to pray, offering Mass and praying during the day, visiting the little missionary graveyard out back, he knew I saw the dead and talked to them. It was obvious. And I would tell him, "I don't see the dead." And he would look at me and tell me, "You lie."

For in times past they did see the dead. Especially the young. For the death of the young devastated them. The death of the old they could manage. But the loss of his young son and some communing with him was overwhelming. I was tempted to tell them how their ancestors went into seclusion for a month, alone. And fasting. They would go into some semi-psychotic state, hallucinate, talk with their lost one. And after a month emerge healed and at peace. But I did not dare to do so for fear that they had lost the art they once had.

The death of the old is a mystery we can in faith come to terms with. We reckon with its inevitability and somehow come to be reconciled with it. Certainly in terms of one's faith.

It is rather the death of the young that grieves us. Arbitrary death it seems to be. Haphazard. Needless. Cruel. If we can deal with the death of the elderly, we are much at a loss to cope with it in a child, a young man, a young woman.

One is reminded of the Holstein-Friesian cattle we had years ago up on the hill. Come Spring they would have calves and after some time the calves would be taken from them and brought over on this side of the highway to the calf-barn. Then on a moonlit night the cows would cry all night for the loss. And there is surely no sadder sound then that of cows calling for their young. Even for dumb animals, the loss of young ones is a terrible loss indeed.

And so it is the arbitrary aspect of the death of the young that Jesus faces up to in his miracles of raising from the dead.

"Talitha, kumi!" "Young girl, I bid you rise!"

To the young son of the widow of Naim: "Young man, Arise!"

To Lazarus, his friend and peer, a man of about thirty: "Lazarus, come forth!"

Death is one thing. The death of the young, another. "Old soldiers never die," intoned the aged General MacArthur at his retirement. "Yes," youth retorted: "young ones do."

So when Jesus confronts the last enemy, it is the enemy at his worst: in the young.

Hence, it is more than death that He overcomes: it is the prodigal death which has moved forward from the inevitable death of the old to the arbitrary death of the young.

And in doing so Christ lays His finger on the cause of death. And that is sin. And the young sin as well as the old. The tie, the link, is not years, but sin. Hence the victory will be over sin and thus and then over death.

To avoid death, then, avoid sin, be you young or old. For the death we die in the body is the fruit of sin and is conquered by victory over sin, a victory won by Christ, but necessarily shared in by us. Lest we too die, as He said, like those killed by the collapsing tower of Siloam (Lk 13:4).

Christ's triumph over death is of no avail to you unless in Him you triumph over sin. Today. Be you young or old.

That is why it does not make sense to cavil over Christ's miracles over death by saying: "What good are they? They died later on anyway: the little girl, the widow's son, Lazarus, and no doubt others." Not true. They did not die. Not really. The death of a Christian is a transit, a passage through a door. It is to leave the womb of this life to be born to eternal life. There is no death for the person of faith.

But that faith is not genuine unless there be death to sin. Death to sin by the rejection of evil and the acceptance of mercy.

We are born in sin as the Pharisees said, so who are we to instruct others? Who are we? We are sinners, sinners whose sins are forgiven in the mercy of God. That's what a Christian is. And the Christian will never die, whether death come early or late, suddenly or gently. Christ triumphed over death, even the arbitrary, whimsical, haphazard death of the young.

We cannot say of Lazarus: "What good the raising since later on he would die anyway." No, he wouldn't. He'd be born to eternal life. So will we all.

The tragedy of Jesus is not merely the tragedy of death, but death when so young. The Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus, did not die. It is not correct so to speak of her. As the Catechism has it:

 When the course of her earthly life was finished, she was taken up body
 and soul into heavenly glory and exalted by the Lord. (No. 966)

But Jesus, sinless Son of the living God, became sin for our sake and suffered the most tragic death. And death when but a young man. Because He was identified with us sinners, even though sinless. He submitted to death in order to overcome death.

His raising Lazarus from death was to express in anticipation His victory over death, just as in anticipation the Virgin Mary was spared sin and death.

The miracle of Lazarus became thus an expression of the basic thrust of Christ's life, death, and rising — the conquest of sin and death. And our own engagement in all this is basic. The mystery of our life and death and rising is here played out [on this altar]. Live.  Amen.