Portal:Catholicism/Patron Archive/December 17
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Lazarus (Heb. Elʿāzār Eleazar "one God has helped") is the name of two separate characters mentioned in the New Testament. The more famous one is the subject of the miracle recounted only in John, in which Jesus raises him from the dead. The other appears uniquely in Jesus' parable of Lazarus and Dives.
In allusion to John's account of the resurrection of Lazarus, the name is often used to connote apparent restoration to life in the scientific term Lazarus taxon, which refers to organisms that reappear in the fossil record after a period of apparent extinction. The Lazarus phenomenon refers to an event in which a person spontaneously returns to life (the heart starts beating again) after resuscitation has been given up. There are also numerous literary uses of the term.
In the Gospel of Luke 16:19–31, Lazarus is a beggar who lay outside the gate of a rich man, whom later tradition has given the name Dives, who dressed in fine clothing and dined sumptuously every day, but gave nothing to Lazarus. Both men died, and the beggar received his reward in the Hereafter, in Abraham's bosom at the everlasting banquet, while the rich man craved a drop of water from Lazarus' finger to cool his tongue as he was tormented in the fires of Hell. Lazarus is the only person in a New Testament parable given a name; the rich man of the parable has been named Dives by tradition, although the name does not appear in Luke.
For the last century, "Catholic exegetes now commonly accept the story as a parable... The purpose of the parable is to teach the evil result of the neglect of others. Lazarus was rewarded, not because he was poor, but for his virtuous acceptance of poverty; the rich man was punished, not because he was rich, but for vicious neglect of the opportunities given him by his wealth."
In the Gospel of John Lazarus, also called Lazarus of Bethany or Lazarus of the Four Days was a man who lived in the town of Bethany. The sisters sent word to Jesus that the one he loved was ill. Jesus was delayed and found that Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days, and Martha reproached him. When Jesus assured her that Lazarus would rise, she took his meaning for the resurrection on Judgment Day, to which he replied, "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die". In the presence of a crowd of Jewish mourners, Jesus had the stone rolled away from the tomb and bade Lazarus to come out, and so he did, still wrapped in his grave-cloths. Jesus then called for his followers (friends and family alike) to remove the grave-cloths. The narrator claims many other Jews were convinced of Jesus' divinity after visiting Lazarus, but says no more of the individual.
The 13th century Golden Legend claims that Lazarus fled to Cyprus, where he became the first bishop of Larnaka/Kittim, appointed directly by Paul and Barnabas. It was claimed that the bishop's pallium was presented to Lazarus by the Virgin Mary, who had woven it herself. Such apostolic connections were central to the claims to autocephaly made by the bishops of Kittim—subject to the patriarch of Jerusalem—during the period 325–413.
Lazarus the beggar and Lazarus the resurrected were combined in Romanesque iconography carved on portals in Burgundy and Provence.
Attributes: with tomb
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