This is a meditation for December 20 from the Russian book, “Day by Day”. Lewis connection follows:
"Scripture: ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up’ (Jn: 11, 11)
"Meditation:
"Remember the touching scene in Bethany after the death of Lazarus. The same occurs after everyone’s death. Lazarus is the beloved person whom the Lord has taken away from us. And we are Martha and Mary, crying over the departed. And Jesus is the same – yesterday and today and forever. Yes, He is also ready to come to us in our moment of grief, as He came to Bethany to the grieving family. It was He, God Almighty Himself, who became a loving brother, a close friend, of Whom they said: “Jesus cried”.
"And we also feel that Jesus understands us, that He suffers with us, that our grief is not foreign to Him, that He is speaking with us in this grief as the One Who cried with the sisters of Lazarus and the mother over her son’s coffin; as the One Who experienced every trial and sorrow, Who loved His friends, and, dying, showed care for his Mother. He speaks with us as the Son of Man, as “a man of suffering, and familiar with pain” (Is: 53, 3). He speaks the words which no one else can speak and which pour like balm on the wounds of our heart. And He says to us, like to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in Me, even if he dies, will live” (Jn: 11, 25). The one whom you mourn will arise.
“Listening to this divine voice, our grief subsides, a ray of heavenly light illuminates the fresh grave and our gloomy future, and we realize that, uniting with Christ, we cannot call our life joyless.”
The Lewis connection is from “God in the Dock”, Part I (17), entitled “Some Thoughts”:
“…we follow One who stood and wept at the grave of Lazarus – not surely, because He was grieved that Mary and Martha wept, and sorrowed for their lack of faith (though some thus interpret) but because death, the punishment of sin, is even more horrible in His eyes than in ours. The nature which He had created as God, the nature which He had assumed as Man, lay there before Him in its ignominy; a foul smell, food for worms. Though He was to revive it a moment later, He wept at the shame."
My own feeling about why Jesus cried was not so much that He “wept at the shame”, but that, as a human being, he was deeply touched by the tears of those who were weeping, just as I am often moved to tears when someone else is crying.
Dimitry
“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Love will last forever.” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8)