Do you remember in first grade when you learned the basics of Math. which opened up to you the wonders of adding and subtraction: + and -?

This basic knowledge stays with us for a lifetime. But as we grow, do we not learn rather quickly that addition is much more attracting than subtraction? Does it not seem that our hearts are made and fashioned for addition? We add friends, possessions, money, real estate.

Subtraction means loss, and our hearts are not geared for loss. Loss empties the heart. Whether large or small, loss diminishes us in one way or another When the young Creighton basketball players lost a game they were expected to win, they wept.

They shall know greater losses.  We have all been there; the sorrowful walk from the hearse to the canopied grave site. "Grief looks over our shoulders since we all share the human condition of mortality." *

But today Jesus ADDS to the life of Lazarus and gives us a promise of ultimate addition rather than subtraction, and at that our hearts become glad.

It is so obvious that we may not notice:

The digit symbol for addition is the cross:

+

Breakfast Question: How do I cope with loss?

Personal Reflection: What do I like best about the Lazarus Story?

* Quote from my Contemporary Way of the Cross" which is available for your Holy Week prayer from Tau Publishers, Phoenix. Google Tau Publishers.

 

In today's Gospel, Jesus walks that sorrowful path.

"...he became perturbd and deeply troubled, and said, "Where have you laid him?"

"and he cried out in a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come forth!"

And what had become subtraction, was turned into addition!

Perhaps the deepest human question may be:

"Is our human quest, the destiny of our human heart utimately addition or subtraction."

Shakesphere put it this way:

"To be or not to be that is the question?

+ or -?