Death and Resurrection of Lazar
Lazar was sitting in front of Dr. Andrew Xavier – his childhood friend also – to know the result of his blood test result.
Lazar had been suffering from continuous diarrhoea and fever for the last 15 days. All antibiotics failed so far. Hence he approached his childhood friend and doctor. When Andrew – this is how Lazar used to call him – suggested a thorough blood check-up, including HIV/ AIDS test, Lazar interrupted him with controlled anger.
“Andrew, you know me very well. Though a bachelor, I had never been to a prostitute till date. No blood transfusion. No drug injection. I have only two pleasures in life” He paused for a moment and continued “Alcohol and masturbation. How the hell I infect HIV/AIDS. No chance Andrew” Lazar protested as his morality was under question by his pal.
To this Dr. Andrew temporarily made a retreat. “OK, OK, if you don’t want, and then it is OK. Let us have routine check up.” But Lazar wanted to prove his morality. “OK, Andrew, let me have HIV test also. I am certain I don’t have the damn disease”.
It was the year 1996 and the stigma and discrimination on HIV/AIDS was such that the infected patients, whoever it may be, face instant rejection by the family and social exclusion by the community all over India. Kanyakumari district of Tamilnadu was no exception to this general rule. Superstitious stories on the cause and spread of the disease spread like wild fire in the villages and it did not spare even the educated middle class. What is Ebola now, HIV was then.
Now Dr. Andrew was holding that long plastic rectangular piece in his hand and was turning it upside down many times. A studied silence and reluctance in the face of Dr. Andrew sent a feeling of chillness down the spine of Lazar.
“Andrew, what’s the result?” A feeble question escaped the mouth of Lazar.
Andrew showed him the plastic piece. “Can you see this Lazar?”
Lazar saw two dark red lines on the both edges of the…
Like a lightning, similar picture flashed across his mind. May be two years ago, during his visit to- a social service organization working among the HIV/AIDS patients, Silvester, the coordinator of the program, showed him a similar plastic piece with two dark red lines….
“Lazar, this is HIV test of Murugan, You know him. Last week he was here. Remember? The dark lean fellow. He is finished. See the lines on both ends. HIV positive.” A deep sigh escaped the nostrils of Silvester.
“Oh God! I have AIDS!” Lazar sat like a stone statue as if a thunderbolt crashed through his head and immobilized his senses. Andrew was visibly disturbed and felt pity over this turbulent reaction of his childhood friend. He wanted to bring him back to senses through a few words of hope – a faint hope indeed!
“Don’t feel upset Lazar. This may be false positive. You shall have two more tests to confirm” These assuring words failed to make the anticipated impact on his childhood friend as he received these words of hope with the same stony face.
Lazar, a bachelor of 40 years, staggered back to his rented room in the first floor of a shopping complex located in the ground floor in the Alanchy Junction. Everything around him lost their colour, life, vitality and beauty. A distant cousin paused by him in a motor bike, flashing a smile and with a raised hand. He made a very feeble attempt to return back a faint smile.
He was a faint hearted man by birth. He must have inherited the gene of a coward great, great grandfather from his maternal or paternal line.-
He was lying on his bed like a fallen statue staring on the rooftop. He could not find a reasonable answer to the question tormenting his soul. “How? How?” No words could explain the agony and despair that rent his soul into pieces. He felt the agony of Keats. His ‘heart ached and a drowsy numbness pained his senses as if he was drunk of Hemlock.”
He cursed his fate. He felt emptiness in life for the first time. This emptiness generated nihilism which, in turn, filled his abdomen with a chilling ball of fear rolling inside. He told to himself several times “I am going to die a horrible death like a street dog.” He felt as if he crashed through the iron gates of life, bleeding and whimpering in agony like a child estranged from her mother and lost in the festival crowd, crying aloud “Mom. Mom. Mom…..”
The stillness of night and loneliness further dampened his sagging morale. He could feel the dark and chilling shadows of the Angel of Death hovering over his head. He could hear death knocking aloud at his door.
He wanted to cry aloud to God for comfort. But how could he?
He cursed his fate for killing his God. He wished that he did not meet Rev. Davis and read Frederick Nietzsche, Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx in 1986.
Rev. Davis Raja, a leftist thinker and a leading intellectual in Kanyakumari district, first introduced him to radical thinkers and advised him to read ‘Anti Christ’ of Nietzsche and ‘Essence of Christianity’ of Feuerbach.
Rev. Davis simply brainwashed him. “Lazar, these priests are fooling us with their false Gods. God is the projection of the mind. This is an important discovery in the age of enlightenment. It is Feuerbach who proved this in his famous book” Essence of Christianity”. Have you read it?”
‘Yes I did’
“Good!. Though you are a Catholic, I can find an element of protest in your thinking. You think like a protestant. Keep it. Don’t accept anything without questioning.”
He sincerely followed the dictates of Rev. Davis Raja. Nietzsche’s declaration – God is dead and man is free now – simply thrilled his senses.
He delighted himself in challenging the faith of religious guys.
One day Justus, his colleague in the school and a born again Christian now, met him and persuaded him to give up sins – alcohol and tobacco are sins in his dictionary – and return back to the loving fold of Jesus, the only God.
Like an eagle zeroing in on its prey, Lazar immediately alerted his senses to tear him to pieces.
“OK Justus, I will accept your God and come under his loving fold if you answer my two questions. Right?
“O K, agreed”.
“My first question!. Christians believe in a Christian God, Muslims believe in Muslim God, Sikhs have their own God and Hindus believe in Hindu Gods. If all the people are right, then Heaven resembles a University that has so many departments – English department, science department, mathematics department and so on. Right? Then Heaven has also many departments – Christian Department, Hindu Department, and Muslim Department and so on. This is not possible as the followers of every religion hold that their religion alone is true and their God is the only God. This is self contradictory”.
Lazar ignored the irritation writ large on the face of Justus. He even delighted in his irritation. He felt that he was winning.
“Now my second question! Do you think that your God is omnipotent? I mean all powerful and He knows everything”.
“Yes”
Lazar could sense an element of anger in his ‘Yes’ and that fed his ego.
“Every day we read in news papers news of cruelty, hunger, rape and death. Hundreds and thousands of people are killed in wars in Middle East and Africa. Equal numbers of people are starving to death every day. Earth quakes and natural disasters caused destruction of devastation. Hundreds of thousands of women and children lost their lives. Why not your God protected the children from such disasters? If he is all powerful, then he must be a sadist. Otherwise, he is not a powerful being. Why should I worship a hapless being?”
Justus lost his temper. He yelled at him” Devil entered your heart. You will pay a price for it one day” He cursed Lazar and left.
How could he believe in God now? He could, at the best, make a feeble attempt to believe that he believed in God. He had already read S. T Coleridge while at college. Hence that too was not a viable effort to ease his torment and agony. Any attempt to secure a refuge in religion or in God would be repulsed instantly by his agnostic mind. His rationalistic mind would reject it as projection of mind. He found himself trapped in the graveyard dug by him.
He switched on the music player to hear some melodious old songs. The melodies did not stir the emotions and his ears only heard some noises with his looks focused on the roof.
Once again death and emptiness of life destabilized him. He switched off the music system and lost in despair and agony.
He applied for two month sick leave from the local voluntary organisation in which he was then working as coordinator of Prevention of HIV/ AIDS project. He told a lie to his boss that he infected a viral infection.
Days dragged by with no improvement of his lot. Two months had passed away since he was diagnosed with HIV. The knock of Death no longer rattled his nerves, though he was hearing them every day. His mind was getting conditioned to the pangs of agony. Quite often he could not resist a cold wave passing through his heart to his belly accompanied by a brief shivering.
Lizzy Mathews no longer stirred up his romantic feelings. “She will also die one day. May be I will go first and she may follow me after some years” So he reasoned and such type of reasoning dulled his tender emotions eventually.
Lazar was slowly but steadily losing his ground. He was getting weaker and weaker, both in body and in spirit, to continue the meaningless existence. He was badly in need of a shoulder to bury his face and cry.
He was sliding gradually towards existential frustration and the final psychological breakdown in existential vacuum. Nihilism has already dug a deep cavity in his bosom and painted his face with the varnish of death. His nerves and heart shivered at the prospect of dissolving into nothingness in the vast Universe with no hope for after life.
“No! No! It’s enough!!!” he cried out loudly unto himself one day. He knew well that he could no longer stand the agony. He was desperately looking forward to a shoulder to rest his head and seek comfort. “Let me go and talk with Fr. Servatius”
Fr. Servatius was a liberation theologian but he had a heart full of love and compassion. He knew Lazar from his childhood days. He was the colleague of Mr. De Cruz, father of Lazar, in the college. Now a very old man – may be 74 years – and he was leading a retired life in the old age home of retired priests in the Bishop House Complex.
Lazar knocked the door. He was actually knocking the heart of Fr. Servatius.
Fr. Servatius gave a patient counselling to Lazar who struggled hard to empty his heart of the agonies, despair, agnostic suspicions about God, Heaven and after life tormenting him for the last two months. Fr. Servatius could sense the shivering in him. There was no coherence, clarity in his presentation. Words quite often failed him or logical thinking deserted him. Tears almost blurred vision and waiting for a signal to flood out but he restrained the tears with great difficulty.
Caressing his long beard, Fr. Servatius talked to his heart with tender and loving words.
“Lazar, if you want to cry, please cry out. I will wait. If you want to lie down and cry, please do it” He showed him the bed.
That was enough for Lazar; the proverbial last straw broke the camel’s back. As if the gate of sky opened during a heavy monsoon resulting in a torrential down pour of rain from above, the thin veil restricting the tears was lifted. The tears first trickled down like droplets along his cheek. Soon it assumed the proportion of a heavy down pour of rain, punctuated by occasional whimpering. He closed his face with two palms and cried, cried and cried.
“Lazar, please don’t control the tears or your cry. Go to bed and finish it” He talked with the concern and love of a mother. Another outburst of cry followed quite loud this time.
Finally, the whimpering and tears slowed their pace and Lazar was slowly returning back to his senses. He felt as if a heavy yoke pressing him down hard all these days was suddenly removed. Fr. Servatius extended a towel towards him and said” wash your face”
He went to the wash basin, sneezed out his nose, splashed water on his face and rubbed it hard and clean. He looked his face in the mirror placed just above the wash basin. He could not believe it. Such a serenity and lightness he had never seen for the last two months. He strolled back highly relaxed and slumped into the arm chair.
Sipping the coffee and chewing the biscuits offered by Fr. Servatius, Lazar exchanged smiles with him in between. He was wondering over his transformation. He felt relieved that he could get a solution to tide over his spiritual crisis.
Finally, Fr. Servatius unlocked his lips to let loving words come out and they seemed to console his agony of Lazar , even though temporarily
“I also believe in a creative force that sustains the universe and all the life forms. Love is my God. My body may wither away soon. But I will return back to that creative force that is God. Hence I have no fear of death.”
He paused a while and stared into his eyes and continued. -“Do you think that if you are not tested positive of HIV, you shall live for another 100 or 200 years? No!. Right? You may live for another thirty or maximum forty years. Then you must die. Then why do you fret about HIV/AIDS?
There is a moral philosophy in church. It affirms that the purpose of creation is to be happy. If you are not happy, then you commit a crime against God. If you do not believe in God, then replace God with Nature. Do you believe in Nature? Then believe it.
Dear Lazar! You must repose your faith in something; that something may be a stone or a person.” He continued his talk for other twenty or thirty minutes.
“Father, I know very well that all human beings die one day, including you and myself. That is not my problem. What happens after the death? Is there any Heaven or at least Hell? Is there a God? If so where is he? Will I come back after death as Hindus believe? Is there any scientific evidence for all these questions and doubts tormenting me?”
“Your questions have been tormenting humanity since Adam who was an allegorical representative of Sapiens, thinking animals.” Fr. Servatius talked with the serenity and composure of a sage.
“Philosophers classified these questions under existential problems of life. In religion, these questions fall under mysticism. Do not think that you alone are the first person in the history of mankind who encounter this problem. Even I experienced this twenty years back and found answer in evolutionary mysticism”.
Lazar was greatly relieved at the words that Fr. Servatius too experienced his agony and he was certain that he could get a solution to his mental agonies and torments. Sensing the mood of relaxation in his face, Fr. Servatius continued his soliloquy. Yes, he stared somewhere on the wall and murmured” you are really a brilliant man and studied a lot. But your drawback is that you have studied one side of the life. The brain has two dimensions – one side deals with logic and reason and the other with emotions and fine arts. But life has three dimensions sides. Science, religion and mysticism.
“First, let us talk about science. How many stars and planets are in our galaxy?”
Answered Lazar very meekly “may be billions”
“You are not sure, right?”
Lazar maintained a studied silence.
“Not you alone! Even American and Russian scientists are in the dark about the exact number of planets, stars and solar systems in our galaxy. Even if mankind invents a time machine that will surpass the speed of light, it will take another one millennium to scan our galaxy alone. If so, what about the vastness of the Universe? How many galaxies it contains? Nobody knows. The best scientist in the world may say billions. Your science has so far explored a grain of sand in the Universe. Yes, our solar system is only a grain of sand compared to the vastness of the Universe.
Do you agree with me or not?” questioned Fr. Servatius.
“I agree” murmured Lazar very faintly.
“Dear Lazar, rationalism has its own limitations. Please understand it. Do you know more about science and technology than Einstein? Have you heard about his famous statement about God? He never believed in the God of religion. He rejected the personal God of religion like Karl Marx. He was overawed by the mysteries of Universe and the cosmic order. Finally he declared “ I believe in God and God does not play dices.”
Fr. Servatius stared deeply into the eyes of Lazar who looked down in a pensive mood. He did not know that the priest held a doctorate in psychology also.
“Do one thing, go to your room and read only the four gospel of this Bible.” He handed over to him Authentic King James version of Bible. “If possible, read the Book of Job also. Then you come to me. I assure you that you cannot not die. Death is an illusion. You are life eternal”
He patted on his shoulder and said good day.
His words, though soft, had an instant electrifying effect on him. He experienced the joy and laughed. He held the soft hands of Fr. Servatius and thanked him profusely.
He walked briskly along the road, humming a film song, had one more tea on the road side tea stall and returned back to his room. The words “you cannot die, Death is an illusion. You are life eternal” had been echoing and re-echoing in his mind.
He took the Bible – Authentic King James version Bible, sat relaxed on the chair, opened the Gospels and immersed himself into it.
He browsed through the pages and his eyes fixed on St. Luke Chapter 17 verse 20 which read” If you have faith even the size of a mustard seed, you may say to this tree; Be uprooted and plant yourself in the sea, and it will obey you”
These words thrilled his heart. “If I have faith that I shall be cured of HIV, then it is gone” so he rationalized faith. He closed his eyes and wished that he had faith as small as a mustard seed.
He underlined many similar verses that sowed seeds of hope and recovery.
When he was lying in his bed, the stillness of the night did not scare him, death was not knocking his door.
He recalled how Gregory Rasputin, the Russian monk cured Prince Nicholas of Haemophilia. He fixed his stare on the wound of the Nicholas and prayed fervently and the Prince recovered from the incurable disease.
“This is History. I must believe in History. If not, Boney M would not have immortalized Rasputin with the famous number “La La Rasputin, La La Rasputin, the lover of the Russian Queen….”
He reasoned thus to strengthen his faith in miracle healing power of the mind.
Before he went to sleep, he took a resolution. “I must go and consult Dr. Freddy. He is specialist in treating HIV/AIDS patients.
Dr. Freddy was businesslike in his approach. He talked briefly but scientifically.
“Mr. Lazar, you don’t have AIDS. You are diagnosed with HIV. That is all. That too 50%. You may or may not have HIV. You must do two more testing to confirm whether you have HIV or not. OKAY? “
Lazar asked for certain clarification about the disease. He patiently clarified them very scientifically.
“Even if you are tested positive in the next test, no reason to get panic. If you follow health seeking behaviours and take proper medicines, you can live for another ten or fifteen years. There are a lot of medicines on the pipeline. Positive thinking and health seeking behaviour will lengthen your life”
He scribbled something in a piece of paper from his letter head and handed it over to Lazar.
“Lazar, go to these two VCTCs. Today to one centre and after one week to another one. Give blood for testing. Meet me next week.”-
Lazar was lying in his bed. “Tomorrow morning, I know the result” He murmured to himself. “There are two options; either I have HIV or not”.
“Even if I am positive, nothing to worry. I will follow the medical advice of Dr. Freddy. The next day morning, he visited Dr. Freddy
“You have no HIV. All two tests are negative. This is the result. Go and enjoy the life.”
Lazar yelled aloud” I have no HIV”. He wanted to jump towards the sky. From agony to ecstasy is a turbulent experience. His hormones started running berserk. He wanted to dance and sing along the streets.
He went to Hotel Batcha to have a good breakfast. His heart was still singing. Mrs. Razia could not believe her eyes. She had not seen him in such a hilarious mood.
She teased him. “Lazar sir, what happened to you? You are so happy and bright. For the last four months, you looked grim and sad. Are you in love? Did Lizzy Mathews say ‘I love you?”
He blushed at the mention of Lizzy Mathews. “How can I Razia-? She is very young. How can she say this to me?”
“Why not? My uncle married when he was 58. You are much younger than him.”
He enjoyed such romantic conversations once again. He finished six idlies and two vadais, gulped a coffee, lighted a Gold Flake cigarette and puffed deeply. He enjoyed the fragrance of nicotine. After four months, he started to enjoy the pleasures of life with revenge.
The street was full of life and everything around him looked so beautiful. The wives of other men also looked beautiful. He walked over the dead flowers from the trees strewn along the platform. They never scared him.
He collected the result from doctor Freddy, thanked him from his heart and looked so intensively at the report as if he was reading poetry.
“It is time to sleep. Let me hear some old melodious songs from the tape recorder. It is long time since I heard them”
He reclined on the easy chair and heard the melodies of 1960s. He hummed the song along with yesteryear hero and heroine.
Sleep crept slowly into his eyelids and peace enveloped his heart. He went to his bed hoping for a beautiful sleep.
He was about to sleep when he once again heard the knocking of death. It was not as aloud as it was some days back. The knock was feeble but still he was hearing it.
“I have no HIV. I may not die soon. But I will die anyway. If not today, 10 years or 20 years from now. 40 years have passed like a fast moving James Bond movie. It is only 30 or maximum 40 Christmases-, and then I will be gone. Where will I go? Unto the creative force?”
Never ending questions of life, death and after life started haunting him. He sensed a ball of fear sliding from his heart to his stomach. A cold panic like feeling gripped his entire body. The vast emptiness after death haunted him like ghosts in the grave yard.
“My God!” He murmured faintly.
Dr. Abdul Kalam, former President of India once made an observation; ‘when the mind reaches a new level, it will not return back to its old dimension’
Lazar was condemned to live in his new level. He had no option but to live with the tormenting questions of death, after life and emptiness. Jesus and his miracles faded into oblivion. His rational mind had already hardened his heart with agnosticism.
Finally alcohol provided interim relief to the panic syndromes tormenting his mental peace. The warm water washed away, at least temporarily, the chilling gall of fear engulfing his abdomen.
It was 2001, while he was toddling along the road, with little coordination between his motor system and brain, from the wine shop, a car screeched to a stop and Justus came out of the car with astonishment. It ached his heart to see his childhood friend in rags and despair writ in his face.
Sitting face to face in the secluded area in the Kanyakumari beach, Justus listened patiently the existential questions tormenting his friend.
Justus had already had already completed his post-doctoral thesis in psychology focusing on the power of sub conscious mind. Hence he could understand the agonies of his friend.
Finally he unlocked his lips and soothed the tormenting soul of his friend like a breeze that cools the body of a person wandering in the hot desert.
“Lazar, you had an encounter with death through false HIV positive. You are scared of death and after life. Do you know why? You are walking along the highway of rationalism. You are a slave to the kingdom of reason. Believe me Lazar, I also had encounter with death. But I overcame it through spirituality, not religion. Death no longer scares me because death is an illusion. So also birth.”
Lazar was surprised to hear an echo of the once consoling words of Fr. Servatius.
“If you want to come out of this hell, I will help you. You are now in the hell. Only a small shift, you shall find the heaven in you. Do not seek God without but within. The choice is yours. Tell me whether you need salvation to conquer death or die like…”
Justus left the sentence unfinished.
Lazar responded, albeit with a sense of shame and guilt, feebly “yes”
“No Lazar! No! We are friends. You need not feel guilt or shame. Forget the past. Throw the past into the dustbin. Think of the present. I will introduce to Sister Celine. She is in charge of a de addiction home and an orphanage for children.”
He paused for a moment to see the reaction of Lazar. He could identify a ray of hope and comfort in the agony writ face of his childhood friend.
“Lazar, you drink as much as you want to only today alone. Tomorrow you are coming with me, OK?”
Justus thrust a thousand rupee note into Lazar’s pocket and left.
Lazar drank till late night. A host of questions teased him from within. He held a disrupted and incoherent dialogue within himself. “Is Justus really concerned about me?, Does he intend to convert me into his faith taking advantage of my helplessness? What is damn spirituality? Is it different from religion?”
However, he felt comfortable that a person is concerned about him whether the concern is genuine or not.
Next morning Lazar followed Justus like a goat proceeding towards the slaughter house without any protest. “It is better to be slaughtered than be under perpetual torment and agony.” He reasoned so.
Lazar underwent detoxification and de addiction treatment for three months free of cost. Sister Celine provided counselling every day and Justus visited him every week end.
So overwhelmed was Lazar by the concern and affection that he, at one point, decided to break his hard shells and listen to them, partly out of fear and partly out of curiosity. His erstwhile friends – Marxists, rationalists and atheists – never bothered to visit him.
He read the four Gospels, particularly the Sermon on the Mount, Leo Tolstoy’s ‘ The Kingdom of God is within You’, Joseph Murphy’s ‘ The Power of Your Sub conscious Mind’ and so on.
He realized that the cloud of darkness enveloping his heart was melting like dew drops at the sight of the rays of sun. He was amazed and stunned to look at Karl Marx and Jesus from an entirely new dimension. Sister Celine, herself a liberation theologian, showed Lazar the point of convergence of Jesus and Karl Marx. One day she took the Gospel and asked Lazar to read loudly from Mathew chapter 25 verses 31 to 46.
Lazar read “When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the glory angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from goats:
And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left:
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
For I was hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
Naked and ye clothed me: I was sick and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me:
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked and clothed thee?
Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them , Verily I say unto you , in as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these brethren, ye have done it unto me.
One day he asked Sr. Celine to help him see God. She looked with motherly concern at Lazar and said” when the disciples of Jesus also asked the same question to him. Have you read the reply of Jesus in the Gospel?”
Lazar murmured “Have ye not seen me?” His murmur carried a tone of agnosticism.
Celine tried to bring him to a much higher level. “ in John chapter 10 and verse 33 and 34, the Pharisees challenged Jesus how he could claim himself to be god and to which Jesus answered in verse 34. Open the Gospel and read Lazar.
Lazar read the verse “Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods”
Sister Celine leafed the hairs of Lazar like a mother and whispered into his ears. “Close your eyes and look within and you will find God for God does not exists without.”
Seeing the hesitation in his eyes, Celine continued” if you want to see God scientifically, go into your Subconscious Mind. Do you believe in Subconscious Mind?”
“Yes”
“Read and re read Joseph Murphy’s book. Isaias defined prayer in a wonderful statement-. Do you know what it is” asked Celine.
“No”
“Pray in the stillness of mind”
She paused a little and continued “Lazar, mysticism, religion, existentialism, Marxism or any faith system are holy and same in content if they are coated with love. If your heart is filled with love, then you shall experience God”
Lazar plunged into a pensive mood. He experienced a hunch to experience God through love. But his agnostic mind tortured him with counter questions. ‘What is love? How can you experience love and God within? They are not scientific. God is a projection of the mind’
The breeze was flowing freely into the convent and a pleasant chillness enveloped his being. The yelling, giggling and shouting of the playing children were but sound of music to his ears. The breeze whispered into his ears” Lazar ask for the sixth and -seventh blessings of the Sermon on the Mount”
Lazar read the entire Sermon on the Mount in the night. He meditated on the sixth and seventh blessings.
“Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God.” He murmured these blessings again and again. He experienced a peaceful sleep for the first time in his turbulent life.
The next day, he met Sr. Celine and helped him to get the sixth and seventh blessings.
Sr. Celine was waiting for this opportunity. She knew well that spirituality and love simply happen like a flower blossoming and spreading fragrance.
She advised him to play with the children for one month, sharing the joys of the children and nothing else.
“Lazar! Do you know folk songs, folk dances and folk stories?” enquired Sr. Celine.
“Yes sister, I used to create grass root level awareness programs on Marxist ideology through folk media in the villages” replied Lazar.
“Good. Then teach the children your folk skills and they will teach you the meaning of the sixth and seventh blessings.”
A sense of joy and accomplishment filled the heart of Sister Celine as she could then foresee that the salvation of Lazar was not far away.
The children slowly but steadily melted the hardened rigid mind set of Lazar through their selfless love. They hugged him and kissed him – the signatures of their love. Soon he realized the words of the Son of Man “ The Kingdom- of God is within you”
Lazar is now an old man with a long flowing beard and equally flowing hairs in snow white. He is nearing two decades of life in the convent run orphanage. Sr. Celine is no more. A new Mother Superior by name Sr. Josephine has assumed charge. She also showers love and affection on Lazar like Sr. Celine.
The old students, when he entered the orphanage in 2001, had already left and settled down in life with jobs. Some senior students have children also. The new arrivals call him grandpa. He yells with them, rolls with them, roars like a lion, barks like dog, and walks like a king. The children laugh loudly and enjoy his entertainment shows.
Small children ride on the back of the horse called Lazar.
New visitors who call on Mother Superior for the first time express surprise and shock over the mismatch of the relationship between Lazar and the small children. They enquire with hushed voice whether Lazar is a mentally retarded man. Sr. Josephine gives stock reply to such queries “No he is a child as well as a sage“.
Old aged persons visiting the convent seek his blessings and prayer and Lazar is no miser and he showers lavishly his blessings and prayers.
Last year, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in the Trivandrum Cancer Research Center. It might be the bitter gift for his addiction to alcohol, tobacco and marijuana during his adult age.
But he received the verdict from Dr. Kishore Kumar with a serene smile. Dr. Kishore, a distant relative of Sr. Josephine, was visibly disturbed by the serenity and joy in the face of Lazar.
He exclaimed” Mr. Lazar are you not scared of death?
With the serenity of a saint, he replied” How can I die a second time. I was dead about twenty years back. I cannot die once again”
Kishore was convinced that the guy was mentally affected or mad.
Others may think that Lazar is a helpless old aged man living in the orphanage.
But Lazar and Sister Josephine alone know that a heart filled with love cannot die, because Lazar is now living in the Kingdom of God surrounded by little angles.
This is the Death and Resurrection of Lazar.
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