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The house of Bethany, the place of friendship with Christ and victory over death
Among the most human and deeply theological pages of the Gospel, the Church cherishes with particular affection the memory of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, the three siblings from Bethany, where Jesus found a home to be welcomed, a friendship in which to manifest his humanity, and a sorrow in which to reveal the power of his divinity.
BETHANY. A village located at the gates of Jerusalem, it becomes in the Gospel much more than a simple geographical place: it is the house of friendship with Christ, more so, as Saint Paul VI, a pilgrim in the Holy Land, defined it, “the sanctuary of friendship,” the space in which the Lord is welcomed, listened to, and served, but also the place where, before the tomb of Lazarus, He reveals the mystery of life that conquers death.
The evangelist John delivers to the Church a phrase of extraordinary tenderness: “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” Even before recounting what the three siblings do for Jesus, the Gospel announces what Jesus feels for them. It is Christ who loves first, and it is precisely this love that transforms their home into a privileged place of His presence.
Martha, Mary, and Lazarus represent three different and complementary ways of living the relationship with the Lord. Martha is the woman of hospitality and service; Mary is the woman of listening and contemplation; Lazarus is the friend touched by death and restored to life. They are not three opposing models, but three dimensions of a single following: the Christian is called to listen to the Word, to translate it into service, and to testify to the new life received from Christ.
Martha appears first and foremost as the one who welcomes Jesus into her home. Her desire is to serve Him, to prepare everything for the guest, to make hospitality concrete. However, when service becomes a burden, Jesus addresses her with those words that Christian tradition has contemplated over the centuries: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is needed.” Christ does not condemn service, nor does He devalue work or concrete charity; rather, He invites Martha not to lose sight of the essential amidst the multitude of necessary things. One can work for God and lose sight of God; one can do much for the Lord and no longer have time to listen to His voice. Martha thus teaches that every authentic Christian service must arise from contemplation and listening. Before being hands that work, the disciple must be a heart capable of receiving.
Mary precisely embodies this attitude. Sitting at Jesus’ feet, she listens to his word and chooses “the better part.” Her attitude is that of a disciple who understands that no activity can precede listening to the Master. The Church itself is born from the received Word: before announcing Christ, it must allow itself to be evangelized by Him; before speaking, it must learn to listen. Mary thus becomes an image of the contemplative Church, of that silence in which the soul allows God to speak.
But Mary expresses her love also through a gesture of extraordinary intensity. In the house of Bethany, she anoints Jesus’ feet with a precious perfume of nard and wipes them with her hair. The house is filled with the fragrance. The gesture seems disproportionate according to the logic of utility, but this apparent disproportion reveals the measure of love. Mary does not calculate: she gives. Her gesture is interpreted by the evangelist in light of the Passion that is now near and becomes almost a liturgy anticipated for the burial of the Lord. Where others see waste, Mary recognizes the infinite value of the person of Christ. True love does not measure everything according to profit: it knows that before God nothing is lost when given with a sincere heart.
But the heart of the memory of Bethany lies in the story of Lazarus. He is ill, and Martha and Mary send for Jesus: “Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick.” It is one of the most beautiful expressions of their relationship with Christ: they do not simply present a request, but remind the Lord of the love that binds Him to Lazarus. Yet Jesus does not arrive immediately. When He reaches Bethany, Lazarus has already been in the tomb for four days.
Martha goes to meet him and utters a phrase that belongs to the very heart of the human experience in the face of suffering: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It is a word of pain, but not of despair. Behind the reproach remains faith. Martha still believes that Jesus can act, even when everything seems finished.
And it is then that Christ pronounces the great revelation: “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if they die, will live.” The resurrection is not just a future event, nor a simple doctrine about life after death: it is a Person. Christ himself is the Life. Man does not receive eternal life as a reality separate from the Lord, but by entering into communion with Him. The question posed to Martha then becomes the question posed to every believer: “Do you believe this?”. Martha responds with one of the highest professions of faith in the Gospel: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”
Before the tomb, however, Jesus does something that reveals even more profoundly the mystery of the Incarnation: “Jesus wept.” The Son of God weeps before the death of his friend. Christ is not a stranger to human suffering; he enters into suffering, embraces it, and goes through it. His tears show that the Christian faith does not deny the drama of death. But those tears are not the final word.
In front of the tomb, Jesus commands to remove the stone and then shouts: “Lazarus, come out!”. The voice of the Lord reaches the man in the place where no human voice can reach anymore. Lazarus comes out of the tomb, still wrapped in burial cloths. However, the miracle is not yet the definitive Resurrection. Lazarus will return to earthly life and will die again one day. His emergence from the tomb is a sign that prepares for an infinitely greater event: the Easter of Christ. Lazarus’ tomb anticipates the empty tomb of the Lord. Christ restores Lazarus to life while He Himself approaches His own death. The life given to the friend thus becomes a prophetic sign of the victory that Christ will achieve by passing through the Cross.
Bethany thus becomes a true school of Christian life. Martha teaches service, but a service that cannot be separated from listening; Mary teaches contemplation, which does not remain sterile but transforms into concrete love; Lazarus teaches that the life received from Christ becomes testimony. Their home shows that holiness does not consist in being all the same, but in living in different ways the same friendship with the Lord.
The Church, by celebrating them together, contemplates a small icon of its own vocation. Every family can become Bethany when it welcomes Christ; every home can become a place of prayer when it listens to His Word; every service can become charity when it is born from love; every pain can become prayer when it is entrusted to the Lord.
And before death, when it seems that all hope has been buried, the voice of Christ remains: “I am the resurrection and the life.”
For this reason, the memory of Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus is a deeply paschal memory. They remind us that Christ does not wish to be only adored in great sanctuaries, but welcomed in the home, in everyday life, in friendship, in toil, and in tears.
In Bethany, Jesus was a guest, friend, Teacher, and Lord. In Bethany, He received the service of Martha, the listening of Mary, and the affection of Lazarus. In Bethany, He wept before death and, in front of the stone of the tomb, He manifested the power of Life.
The house of Bethany remains one of the most beautiful images of the Church: a house where Christ is welcomed, His Word is listened to, the neighbor is served, and pain is endured in hope.
Marta, Maria, and Lazarus teach that Christianity is both listening, charity, and testimony; but above all, they teach that friendship with Christ is stronger than death.
Because in front of every tomb in history, in front of every loss and in front of every night of the soul, the Church continues to listen to that voice that transcends the centuries: “Come out.” And when Christ calls, the stone is no longer the conclusion of the story, but the place from which life begins anew.
