Hey kids, today I want to talk about miracles. Over the last few weeks, Jesus has performed some pretty amazing miracles. And miracles are pretty cool right?! I wish we could do these kinds of miracles; how cool would that be? Well, I’m here to tell you that we can be part of a miracle… if we do what it says in this story. Let’s take a look.

I mentioned that Jesus has done a bunch of miracles we have heard about over the last few weeks at Mass. So, what miracles has He done? 

First, there was the transfiguration where He appeared with Moses and Elijah who were already in heaven. Jesus met with Moses and Elijah on top of a mountain and Jesus’ clothes became dazzling white, almost like His clothes gave off their own bright light. Imagine if my Deacon vestments were so white and bright that you’d have to squint your eyes or wear sunglasses to even look at them. That’s how bright Jesus’ clothes were.

And last week, Jesus made clay out of dirt, rubbed it on a blind man’s eyes, and once the blind man washed the clay out of his eyes, he could see perfectly! Jesus has done lots of other miracles too.

But this week is different. This week we heard the story of how a very close friend of Jesus named Lazarus had died, and everyone is very sad. This would take a major miracle to bring Lazarus back to life again, right? No one had ever done that before.

So, Jesus came to a town called Bethany where Lazarus lived with his two sisters who were heartbroken that Lazarus was dead. They said to Jesus that if He had been there sooner, Lazarus would not have died because Jesus would have cured him. When they said this, Jesus replies with something very important for those sisters, and very important for us too.

He said, “Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” 

Whoa! What does that mean – as long as we believe in Him, we will live even if we die? Well, remember what I said a few minutes ago that it was sure cool to read about these miracles, but how crazy would it be if we could be a part of a miracle? That is exactly what Jesus is talking about for you, me and all of us.

He is talking about a miracle that is really a promise Jesus makes to all of us. Jesus says if we believe in Him and follow what He says then we can live with Him, our family and all the people who also believe in Him forever. That’s right, I said forever. Who wants to do that? Raise your hand if you want to live with Jesus and your family forever! 

Me too. 

That’s why we do all this important stuff during Lent like come to Mass, pray, ask God to forgive us when we do something wrong… so that we believe in Him and grow closer to Him by Easter which is only two weeks away. And at Easter we will hear about an even bigger miracle – the Easter miracle. But for now, keep coming to Mass, keep praying so that our friendship and love of Jesus keeps getting stronger. Because if we do this and we believe in Him even more, we can live with Him forever! Does that sound good?

OK, parents, the same goes for us. We want to be a part of that promise, that miracle of heaven. We too need to believe in Him more deeply, we too need to follow His commands more closely, we too need to discover or rediscover what a true, loving relationship with Him feels like, and how that relationship can change our life for the better. 

We get there by an authentic relationship and an authentic love of God. And we too can have our own Easter miracle….