[00:00] In all three of the readings today, we hear this constant repetition of death and life. We need to understand this, above all, in spiritual terms. When our Lord in the first reading says to the prophet Ezekiel, "O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them."

[00:32] "I will put My Spirit in you that you may live." He's not talking about physical death. He's talking about spiritual death. There is a death to which we can be subject, even though our bodies still live. And that is spiritual death. If we are in mortal sin, we are spiritually dead. So here we need to understand a very important thing about redemption. The redemption that God planned, the redemption that our Lord Jesus Christ worked with His

[01:08] life and death and His resurrection, is not just about obtaining the forgiveness of our sins. That's a key element. It goes far beyond that. Our Lord has laid down His life, poured out His precious blood to obtain for us forgiveness of sins, but it doesn't stop there. It's about transmitting to our souls divine life. Before baptism, there is no divine life in us.

[01:38] After baptism, divine life is present in us. God adopts us as children. He infuses His own divine life into our soul. That is what redemption is truly about. God not just forgiving, but elevating us to participate in His own divine life. It's so important to understand this, because many people nowadays make this very superficial distinction between, okay, you believe, I don't believe, so the only difference between us is that you believe and I don't.

[02:10] That's not true. If we don't believe and we're not open to God and faithful to Him, we can actually live in a state of spiritual death. In other words, God is not dwelling in us. We have no part with Him. Our souls are spiritually dead. So it's not just about believing or not believing. It's about possessing an incredible gift or not possessing it. It's about living with your soul filled with divine light and divine love or not.

[02:48] So when our Lord says, "O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them," He's talking precisely about this transmission of divine life to our souls, and that divine life is not there as something static. It wants to transform us, to elevate us into an ever greater participation in its own characteristics, its own perfections. That's why as children of God, as baptized, we are called to perfection, because we can't just leave this imbalance between our wretchedness and that perfection of divine life of God's

[03:23] own indwelling in our soul. We've got to let ourselves be transformed by His life in us. That's why St. Paul says, "If you have risen with Christ, walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh." In fact, in the second reading, St. Paul says that, speaking to the Romans, "Those who are in the flesh cannot please God, but you are not in the flesh." On the contrary, "you are in the Spirit." "If only the Spirit of God dwells in you."

[03:58] "The One who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through His Spirit dwelling in you." Here He speaks clearly about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the soul. The soul is alive because of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the soul. What does he mean when he talks about being in the flesh or being in the Spirit? Simply a term which refers to that living our lives simply for the pleasures of this

[04:29] world without the presence of God in our soul, or else even making use, when they are legitimate, of the things of this world, but not as an end, but within our life of love and service toward God, our life as children of God, where we use the things of this world as a means, we give glory to God for them, but at the end is love and honor and glory

[05:00] given to God and not our own pleasure. You can see how there's a substantial difference between living according to the flesh and living according to the Spirit. The one is focused entirely on passing things, dead end, just, you know, it terminates in time and ends simply in what you feel when you do it. That's it. Nothing beyond that. Second one, living according to the Spirit, letting that divine life transform you and raising your intention to love God and serve Him and live according to that divine life,

[05:32] it goes out, the determinant of this is outside of time. It's God Himself. And so it's not just about doing the value of something you're doing when you do it. It's acquiring a value which goes out of time and which you will find in eternity. Beautiful image that our Lord offers us in today's Gospel for the resurrection of Lazarus.

[06:02] And it's a beautiful image of that which happens every time a soul in mortal sin goes to Confession. This Gospel scene is repeated in a very real sense. A soul goes into that confessional in the state of mortal sin, it's as if in the tomb. There's no divine life. It's very important to remember this and I often say it, I'm going to stress it again. Mortal sin is not just about a more grievous offense. It's about having lost divine life.

[06:35] That's why we call it mortal. You've lost divine life. You've done something which is so incompatible with God's holiness and sanctity that He has had to leave your soul. That's what mortal sin is about. You've just lost the greatest thing you ever had, God's presence in your soul. That is what mortal sin determines. So you are as if closed in the tomb. And then through the ministry of the priest, our Lord absolves you and is literally saying to you, you know, "Lazarus, come out."

[07:08] Come out of that tomb. He gives life back to your soul. But notice that when Lazarus comes out of the tomb, he's still bound. So he's alive again. He walks out of the tomb, but he's still bound. And that's also an image of the soul who, even though it receives divine life again in Confession, it receives the spiritual resurrection, comes back to life, divine life is once again placed in the soul, it's still bound by the bad habits it acquired with sin.

[07:43] Those bad habits, the vices, those bad tendencies, that damage that has been done by sin. You're now in the state of grace, but you still got to work in order to uproot these bad tendencies. If you don't, they're going to bring you back to that state of spiritual death. So we have to remember that it's not just about forgiveness of sin, it's about acquiring virtue and uprooting bad habits. If we don't, we're just going to keep falling back into sin.

[08:17] Also, we can consider the personal aspect here. Our Lord calls Lazarus by name, "Lazarus, come out." And we can hear that pronounced toward each one of us by name. God knows us by name. His love for us is not just something collective, sort of loves this holy Mass crowd, but you're just kind of lost in the gray of this crowd. That's not the way God loves us. His love is personal for each and every one. He knows you. He loves you personally.

[08:48] He knows your name. He knows everything about you. And He calls you personally to union with Him, to conversion, to a response to His love. So this is something very important for us to understand. So to hear this call pronounced toward each one of us and give a response. In the light of all this, someone could say, well, maybe most of us here live in a state

[09:22] of grace. So how does this apply to us? It applies to us because we need to understand, well, firstly, because it could actually apply to some of us. Each one knows whether or not it does. Do I live in grace or do I live in sin, in a state of mortal sin? But it's important for us to understand this, you know, that we understand the gravity of the situation in the world and in our society. We're talking here about thousands and millions and billions of souls who are not living in

[09:55] the state of grace. So there's a spiritual death which is just so widespread. And so that brings us, as children of God, to need to feel the urgency here, to have a zeal for the salvation of souls. That's why Our Lady, every time she appears, she tells us to pray the rosary for the conversion of sinners. When we talk about sinners, that term in this context simply means those who habitually live in mortal sin. That is what we mean.

[10:25] We're not excluding ourselves as sinners by using the word in that sense. We're simply referring to those who habitually live in mortal sin, which means that they are particularly in danger as far as their eternal salvation goes. So we're called in charity to pray, to do penance, to embrace our daily cross, to love God in order to obtain grace not only for ourselves but for the world so that, you know, as Martha and Mary called Jesus, interceded, so to speak, for their brother, to obtain

[11:00] for him the gift of resurrection, so we need to do the same, praying, doing penance, calling upon our Lord that He bring out of the tomb, so to speak, those who are spiritually dead. This is so urgent. So let us turn to our Blessed Mother who is Mediatrix of all grace and Mediatrix of the very life, of the very divine life that we receive in baptism, Mediatrix of every grace that we receive every time we pray, even when we receive the sacraments.

[11:34] She as spouse of the Holy Spirit, as Mother of God, is always Mediatrix of this grace. She's like a mother transmitting divine life to her children. She can't do that in herself insofar as she is human, but because she is spouse of the Holy Spirit so united to God, that actually does happen. Her will is always involved in this transmission which departs from God but which involves her as mother and spouse of the Holy Spirit in forming the children of God.

[12:08] So we want to turn to her as little children, confident in her motherly love, asking her to obtain for us, to obtain for the world the spiritual resurrection and to obtain for us the grace to persevere in grace, to appreciate this gift of divine life in us, to adore the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, thank Him for His presence, cultivate our personal response to His love, become ever more worthy temples of His presence, and so be that light to the

[12:41] world that God calls us to be. Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.