St. Lazarus

Who they were

Lazarus of Bethany is the only person the Gospels identify, by the mouths of others, plainly as the Lord's friend: Lord, he whom you love is ill.

John 11 is the chapter to read whole. The delay nobody in the family understood. Martha's blunt grief and her confession. Mary falling at his feet with the same sentence. And then the two verses everything here is built on: Jesus wept, the shortest in Scripture, God in tears at the grave of his friend while fully intending to raise him, which is the permanent charter for Christian grief, because sorrow and hope are not opponents. Then the stone, the objection that by now there is an odour, which the Gospel keeps for realism, and the call by name: Lazarus, come out. The man who came out bound in grave cloths became, John notes, so dangerous a witness that the authorities plotted his death too. The traditions of his later life diverge, the East making him bishop of Kition on Cyprus and Provence telling its own tale, and both are traditions rather than record.

Why people turn to St. Lazarus

The grieving, since every Christian vigil stands in the shadow of John 11. The dying, with St. Dismas. And all who want what he had and did nothing special to earn: friendship with God.

How to ask their intercession

At a graveside, the two verses in order, Jesus wept and then come out, held together rather than one without the other. There is nothing you need to feel first.