Lazarus Saturday - Arise!

This is a great way to involve your kids in the Raising of Lazarus! Wrap them in "burial" cloth and see who will be first to break free on your command!

It's extremely significant that the Church places Lazarus Saturday exactly one week earlier than the Resurrection of Christ. The miracle teaches us the power of God over death, so that we may learn to truly believe and have our faith transformed at Pascha. Just as we begin Holy Week, we get a glimpse and foretaste of the way God will save the world from the corruption of sin, from sickness and pain. As Christ said, Lazarus was merely sleeping. Although death had claimed him for four days in the tomb, and he smelled from the corruption of his body, he will live again. This is our Orthodox theology! Our view of death as sleeping in anticipation of whats to come. This is the joyful sorrow of what we are about to experience in Holy Week.
We mourn, all the while expecting the greatest of all miracles!

Lazarus is also one of the most convincing examples used to explain the respect, honor, and sanctity of the physical body in the Orthodox faith as we fully believe in the Resurrection of the BODY and the SOUL for eternal life. Although it remains a mystery, and we will not be in need of food as we'll be more like angels, we will indeed have our physical bodies. See  Ezekiel 37:5.

Lastly, remember: Lazarus is each one of us. Each and every time we attend a funeral or place a loved one in the grave, we should remember this very real example as a foretaste of our own earthly death. How does God feel about each one of us? Does He weep for us as He wept for Lazarus? Is He a loving God that desires us to be with Him? Why has He allowed Lazarus to die?

We find the answer in the words of Christ to His Father, which are for our benefit. He says, "So that they may believe."

Christ attends the funeral to join the people in their sadness, to display His own mourning over all of humanity's fallen and deteriorated state, and to transform the event into a celebration of life! He turns our tears of sadness into tears of joy!

Christ - the Joy, the Truth, and the Light of All, the Life of the World and the Resurrection - has appeared in his goodness to those on earth. He has become the Image of our resurrection, granting divine forgiveness to all. - See more at: http://lent.goarch.org/saturday_of_lazarus/learn/#sthash.w0V0m0Jz.dpuf

Christ - the Joy, the Truth, and the Light of All, the Life of the World and the Resurrection - has appeared in his goodness to those on earth. He has become the Image of our resurrection, granting divine forgiveness to all. - See more at: http://lent.goarch.org/saturday_of_lazarus/learn/#sthash.w0V0m0Jz.dpuf

Why God Became Man?

“You must understand why it is that the Word of the Father, so great and so high, has been made manifest in bodily form."

“Christ has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men” 

“It was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgression that called out His love for us, so that He made haste to help us and to appear among us.

“…the human race was in process of destruction… what then was God, being Good, to do?”

“It was unthinkable that God, the Father of Truth, should go back upon His word regarding death in order to ensure our continued existence.”

“…corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death” 

“For by the sacrifice of His own body He did two things: ' He put an end to the law of death which barred our way; and He made a new beginning of life for us, by giving us the hope of resurrection.”



"The word became flesh (that is, man), that the flesh might become God by grace; and He became like us in all things, that we might become like the Word in all of the virtues."

Quoted from 'On the Incarnation' by Saint Athanasios the Great. Read the whole treatise here at this link.  The above theology has been adapted for a curriculum located for free at this link. 

If you die before you die

There is a sign above the entrance of a Monastery on Mount Athos that reads:


"If you die before you die,
than when you die, you will not die"


Not only is it clever but it reminds us all that the Kingdom of God, which is within us, is meant to be experienced here in this world. Elder Porphyrios also taught this to his spiritual children saying,


"Struggle to become immortal from now, by dying here on the earth to your bad self. In this way, you won't be sad, but you'll be very glad, living together with Christ."