le
about a person who has risen from the dead, if after his resurrection
he were the same as he was before dying? Indeed what would be the
meaning of describing the life of such a person in the words, "I am
the resurrection and the life"? Life and meaning at once come into the
words of Jesus if we understand them to be the expression of a
spiritual occurrence and then, in a certain sense, literally as they
stand in the text. Jesus actually says that He is the resurrection
that has happened to Lazarus, and that He is the life that Lazarus is
living. Let us take literally what Jesus is in St. John's Gospel.

He is "the Word that was made flesh." He is the Eternal that existed
in the beginning. If he is really the resurrection, then the Eternal,
Primordial has risen again in Lazarus. We have, therefore, to do with
a resurrection of the eternal "Word," and this "Word" is the life to
which Lazarus has been raised. It is a case of illness, not one
leading to death, but to the glory, _i.e._, the manifestation of God.
If the eternal Word has reawakened in Lazarus, the whole event
conduces to manifest God in Lazarus. For by means of the event Lazarus
has become a different man. Before it, the Word, or spirit did not
live in him, now it does. The spirit has been born within him. It is
true that every birth is accompanied by illness, that of the mother,
but the illness leads to new life, not to death. In Lazarus that part
of him becomes ill from which the "new man," permeated by the "Word,"
is born.

* * * * *

Where is the grave from which the "Word" is born? To answer this
question we have only to remember Plato, who calls man's body the tomb
of the soul. And we have only to recall Plato's speaking of a kind of
resurrection when he alludes to the coming to life of the spiritual
world in the body. What Plato calls the spiritual soul, St. John
denominates the "Word." And for him, Christ is the "Word." Plato might
have said, "One who becomes spiritual has caused something divine to
rise out of the grave of his body." For St. John, that which took
place through the life of Jesus was that resurrection. It is not
surprising, therefore, if he makes Jesus say, "I am the resurrection."

There can be no doubt that the occurrence at Bethany was an awakening
in the spiritual sense. Lazarus became something different from what
he was before. He was raised to a life of which the Eternal Word could
say, "I a