Jn 11,19-27 – Saints Martha, Mary and Lazarus – Memory
Today’s feast is, in a certain sense, the feast of friendship, because we celebrate Martha, Mary and Lazarus, the friends of Jesus. Their home in Bethany is one of the few places in the Gospel where we see Jesus experiencing the beauty of a free, intimate family relationship. Jesus also needed friends. But the most interesting thing about their story is that friendship with Christ does not leave them the same as he found them. Martha, Mary and Lazarus are continually challenged to grow, to change, to become more and more themselves.
Because true friendships do not crystallize us in our defects and do not simply support who we are. They help us become the best version of ourselves. Perhaps this could be an important criterion for understanding the quality of our relationships: what does this friendship bring out of me? Does it make me better or worse? Does it help me become freer, more true, more capable of loving, or does it fuel my fragility, my selfishness and my bad choices? In fact, there are people with whom we feel good, but who are not necessarily good for us. Not all the people we hang out with are really our friends. Some are simply snack companions, others share interests and habits, still others risk becoming accomplices of our worst parts. A true friend, however, is not the one who always agrees with us, but the one who sincerely desires our good.
Jesus is friends with Martha, Mary and Lazarus in just this way. He loves each person respecting their uniqueness, but at the same time leads each person beyond himself. He corrects Martha, welcomes Mary, calls Lazarus back from the dead. His friendship is never possession, but liberation. Life is too difficult to live without friends. But it is also too precious to hand it over to relationships that make us worse. Perhaps today’s celebration invites us to ask ourselves not only how many friends we have, but what kind of friends we are and which people we have chosen to walk beside us. True friendship is recognized by this: when someone really loves us, their presence slowly helps us to become the truest and most beautiful thing we carry inside.
