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The final hours before the crucifixion was a time of fear. Judas, afraid and overwhelmed, had sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Peter, confronted by a servant girl in a courtyard, denied three times that he even knew the man. And on the cross itself, Jesus cried out the words of Psalm 22: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" If fear could bring Peter to his knees and draw that cry from the lips of Christ, we should not be surprised when it brings us to our knees

In Sunday's Gospel , Jesus stands before the tomb of his friend Lazarus and weeps. Then he does something that confounds the mourners around him: he calls Lazarus out of the grave. The stone must be rolled away. The burial cloths must be removed. And a man who was lost is restored. Many of our marriages do not end in divorce. They decline into something quieter: a slow withdrawal into routine, financial partnership, and social performance. The love is not gone so much as it i

In this Sunday's Gospel , Jesus and his disciples encounter a man born blind. The disciples ask: "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?"  They want an explanation. They want someone to hold responsible. Jesus redirects them entirely: "Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him."  The question they asked, it turns out, was the wrong question. Our marriages have a way of producing the same reflex. Something goes wro