5th Sunday of Lent A
Knights of Columbus Insurance Incentive Trip
Basilica Santa Maria del Mar
Barcelona, Spain
March 22, 2026
I. Introduction
A. What a blessing to worship in this venerable basilica where saints
such as Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Borgia, and Vincent Ferrer have prayed.
Christopher Columbus is said to have prayed here at this cathedral by the sea,
so near to the palace where he reported
the outcome of his first voyage to the New World to Queen Isabella.
Whatever the vicissitudes of his four voyages,
and whatever some contemporary historians may say of him,
he was a man of great courage, who journeyed into the unknown,
crossing unchartered seas,
encountering realities for which no one could have been prepared adequately.
Rather than second guess this explorer,
let us allow his experience to symbolize the journey we are making,
a voyage over waters that at once are familiar to us
and over waters that are still unknown to us.
B. I refer to our voyage over depths that lead from this life to the next.
The ancients called these waters the River Styx,
named for a goddess of ancient mythology, the goddess of the underworld.
It was via the River Styx that mere mortals traveled to a fate unknown.
That is how ancient Greece and Rome dealt with the phenomenon of death,
that enigma that has dumbfounded ancients and moderns, viz., our mortality.
II. Jesus Confronts Death
A. Mythology has much to teach us,
but it is only Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, who confronts our mortality.
When Jesus learns of the illness of his friend Lazarus.
he does not come immediately to Bethany to save him from death.
No, he waits until Lazarus dies and is indeed dead for four days.
Only then does he engage his friend Martha, the sister of Lazarus.
“If only you had come, he would never have died,”
says she in her imperfect faith.
The Lord, who alone has power over life and death, responds,
not by immediately performing a miracle but by deepening Martha’s faith,
and then by lamenting the death of his friend –
for death was never meant to be a part of his heavenly Father’s plan.
B. Jesus then prays to his heavenly Father,
determined to bring his friend back across the impassable ocean of death,
resolute to call his friend back to the other side of the River Styx.
The onlookers are horrified – “surely there will be stench” – they say!
After all, Lazarus had been in the tomb four days.
Undeterred, Jesus prays to the Father of love and life,
and calls Lazarus forth from that unbridgeable distance between life and death,
that ocean from which no one, no matter how powerful, can return.
C. Lazarus emerges from that impassible ocean, bound hand and foot,
restored to earthly life, restored to his sisters and to his friend Jesus.
When Jesus says, “Untie him and let him go,”
Lazarus instantly symbolizes a humanity freed from the bonds of sin and death.
We know this because, in the Sacrament of Penance,
we are unbound from our sins –
set free to live again, set free to live for Christ, set free for eternal life.
III. The Upshot
A. What are we to make of all this?
Was Columbus merely a courageous explorer?
Were his voyages merely a matter of human exploration,
or do they not indeed capture something of the voyage we are making,
a voyage we dare not undertake except in grace of Christ Jesus,
for he alone grants us safe passage over the turbulent waters of sin and death!
B. Worshipping in this 14th century basilica by the sea,
let us focus on the voyage on which we find ourselves,
a voyage on which we pass from sin to grace and from life to death,
led by the One who went ahead of us by his Cross and Resurrection.
C. Lazarus, of course, would die again.
Jesus died and rose again, never more to die.
The Lord wants to work in us a miracle greater than he worked for Lazarus,
so much does he love us!
He wishes to impart to us, not a new lease on life, but an imperishable life,
a life that can cross from death to eternal life, from here to eternity,
not because of our strength or our goodness,
but because his love iw stronger than sin and more powerful than death!
D. Isn’t this what we are preparing to celebrate with great solemnity
as soon we enter upon Holy Week,
the greatest week in the Church’s year of grace?
How we should look forward to re-living the great events
that brought us new life in Christ,
for it is upon Christ that we have pinned our hopes and staked our lives.
E. May we, who are named for Christopher Columbus,
resolutely cross that ocean which no one can cross without Jesus Christ,
the ocean that traverses sin and grace, grace and glory, life and death,
and may the love of Jesus Christ be the North Star our lives,