Jesus said,
Take away the stone.
Martha, the sister of him that was dead, said unto him, Lord, by this time he stinks: for he has been dead four days.
Read Chapter 11
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Jesus said: Take ye away the stone. Jesus commanded this, first, that when the stone was taken away the Jews might both see the body of Lazarus, and smell that it was corrupted, and so think his raising a work of more power. Secondly, that He might speak in the presence of the body of Lazarus, and bringing it dead before God should obtain of Him that it be raised up.
Typically, S. Bernard (Serm4 , De Assump.): "Let the stone be taken away, but let penitence remain, no longer weighing down and burdening the mind, but confirming and rendering it living and strong; yes, let its food be to do the will of the Lord, which before it knew not." So also training does not now constrain him who is free, as it is said, "The law is not made for the righteous; but rules and directs one who pays it a voluntary obedience into the way of peace."
Martha, the sister of him that was dead, &c. Mystically, S. Augustine says: "Lazarus four days dead signifies a sinner buried in the habit of sin, and as it ...
It is usual to refuse to believe in the possibility of great deeds, and to be somewhat reluctant to admire is a feeling which naturally is consequent upon things beyond our experience. It seems to me that even the good Martha suffered this; for the excessive greatness of the event took from her the sure confidence of faith, and the strangeness of the hope bewilders her proper reason. And it is nothing astonishing if she who had confessed her faith is again overtaken by littleness of faith through the excessive greatness of the marvellous deed. And either solely out of honour to Christ she said: By this time he stinketh; that He might not be disgusted by the bad smell of the corpse: or she says this as if from shame. For the relatives of the dead hasten, before the body becomes ill-smelling, to bury it down in the earth, out of consideration for the living, and deeming it a dishonour to the dead that it should become an object of loathing to any.
Take away the stone. He could have done this by his word and command; or he could have made Lazarus come out without taking off the stone; he needed not to pray, who could do and command every thing. (Witham)
Why did not He when at a distance summon Lazarus, and place him before their eyes? Or rather, why did He not cause him to arise while the stone yet lay on the grave? For He who was able by His voice to move a corpse, and to show it again endowed with life, would much more by that same voice have been able to move a stone; He who empowered by His voice one bound and entangled in the grave-clothes to walk, would much more have been able to move a stone; why then did He not so? In order to make them witnesses of the miracle; that they might not say as they did in the case of the blind man, It is he, It is not he. For their hands and their coming to the tomb testified that it was indeed he. If they had not come, they might have deemed that they saw a vision, or one man in place of another. But now the coming to the place, the raising the stone, the charge given them to loose the dead man bound in grave-clothes from his bands; the fact that the friends who bore him from the tomb, knew from...
