Love That Costs Something

On Lazarus, the love of Christ, and trusting God when the storms blow through

Sunday’s readings led us straight into one of the most tender and startling moments in Scripture: the raising of Lazarus in John 11:1–45. Alongside it, the Church gave us Ezekiel 37:12–14, Psalm 130, and Romans 8:8–11; readings full of grief, waiting, and the promise that God brings life where we see only death.

Photo: my own; Groton, Massachusetts

There is a kind of love that feels beautiful until it asks something of us.

A love that stays warm only when things are easy.

A love that feels tender only when it remains comfortable.

A love that sounds compassionate, but never reaches the point of sacrifice.

But that is not the love of Christ.

In Sunday’s Gospel, the sisters send word to Jesus: “Master, the one you love is ill.” And then John tells us something that can feel almost painful to read: Jesus stays where He is for two more days. The same passage tells us clearly that Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, and still He did not rush in to prevent their sorrow.

That tension matters.

Because if I am honest, I often want love to look like immediate rescue. I want love to mean quick relief, fast clarity, and neat resolution. I want the kind of love that keeps grief from ever arriving.

And if I am even more honest, that desire has felt especially sharp these past couple of days.

Since Mass on Sunday, it seems like one problem after another had arrived at our door. We have had one household issue after another, each one carrying its own stress, its own cost, and its own temptation to fear. Nothing especially dramatic from the outside, maybe. But piled together at once it’s just the sort of strain that can make peace feel suddenly fragile and fear feel loud.

That is exactly why this Gospel has landed differently with me now than it did when I first sat down to write about it. The love of Jesus is deeper than the kind of love that only feels real when everything is quickly fixed.

He says, “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God.” He is not absent. He is not careless. He is not detached. He is doing something bigger than immediate relief.

And that is where this Gospel presses into real life: being loved by God does not always mean being spared suffering. Sometimes it means being held inside suffering by the One who refuses to waste it.

A love that costs something does not stay far away from pain. It comes near enough to weep.

Martha’s words are so human: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It is not the voice of unbelief. It is the voice of wounded faith. Faith that still comes out to meet Jesus. Faith that still speaks to Him through disappointment. And Jesus answers her, not first with an explanation, but with Himself: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Not: I will explain everything right now.

Not: I will make this painless.

But: I am.

I am still God here.

I am still trustworthy here.

I am still present here.

That kind of love costs something, because it asks us to trust Him beyond the outcome we would have chosen.

And then there is Mary.

She comes to Jesus carrying the same grief, the same heartbreak, the same words: “Lord, if you had been here…” And then Scripture gives us one of the shortest verses in the Bible, and one of the most piercing: “And Jesus wept.”

He knew resurrection was coming, and He still wept. He knew the tomb would not have the final word, and He still wept. He knew what He was about to do, and He still allowed Himself to be moved by their sorrow.

That matters so much to me.

It means Jesus does not love us from a distance. He does not stand outside our pain and offer detached advice. He does not shame grief. He does not hurry tears along because they are inconvenient.

He comes close enough to weep.

Holy love comes near.

The love of Christ is willing to suffer with us.

Jesus does not love us by avoiding our sorrow. He loves us by entering it.

That is part of why Father Mike’s homily landed so strongly this week. He frames the homily around the “epilogue” of our story: after grace, after “the return,” how do we live now? What does the bonus chapter look like?

That question has stayed with me.

Because sometimes I treat grace like the ending. As if the whole goal is simply to get through the hard chapter. Survive the suffering. Reach the miracle. Watch the stone roll away.

But the Christian life does not end there.

Lazarus comes out of the tomb, but he comes out still wrapped, and Jesus says, “Untie him and let him go.”

Resurrection is beautiful.

But unbinding is vulnerable.

It is one thing to ask God to bring dead places back to life. It is another thing to let Him unwrap the layers we have grown used to wearing: self-protection, resentment, fear, the masks we wear in public; the parts of us that would rather stay guarded than be healed.

Sometimes we want the miracle without the exposure; we want new life without being changed.

Real love does not stop at comfort. The love of Christ calls us out of the tomb, and then it frees us to live. And maybe that is where this theme becomes personal.

What does it look like to love with a love that costs something?

And today, on the Solemnity of the Annunciation, the Church honors Mary’s fiat - her yes: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Her yes was not cheap. It was not a soft, sentimental agreement to an easy plan. It was a surrender that would cost her something. It would ask trust, humility, endurance, and love. Maybe that is part of what holy love looks like too: not only asking Christ to come near in our sorrow, but learning, with Mary, to say yes to God even when we do not yet know the full shape of what that yes will require.

Loving with a love that costs probably looks less polished than we imagine.

It looks like:

Forgiving when pride wants to keep score.

Serving in hidden places.

Praying when there is no immediate evidence that anything is changing.

Trusting that God’s delay is not His absence.

Believing that even now, He can call life out of places that already smell like death.

Sunday’s first reading in Ezekiel says, “O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them.” And in Romans, St. Paul reminds us that the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us and gives life. These are not soft, symbolic images. They are resurrection words.

Maybe Lent is not only about what we are giving up. Maybe it is also about what we are letting Christ raise up.

Love that costs something will always look like Jesus.

A love that stays.

A love that weeps.

A love that obeys.

A love that sacrifices.

A love that does not run from suffering.

A love that remains faithful.

A love that calls the dead back to life.

And that is the love I want to receive.

Not a love that keeps everything easy.

A love that keeps me near Him.

Not a love that costs nothing.

A love that costs something because it is real.

Sometimes the holiest thing we can do is refuse to let fear tell the whole story.

Photo: my own; Lake Palestine