25. Dixit ei Iesus: Ego sum 25. Jesus said to her: I am resurrectio et vita: qui the resurrection and the life: credit in me, etiam si mortuus he that believeth in me fuerit, vivet: although he be dead, shall live. 26. Et omnis qui vivit et 26. And every one that liveth, credit in me, non morietur in and believeth in me shall not aeternum. Credis hoc? die for ever. Believest thou this? 25, 26. Christ avails of this occasion to perfect her faith, and in the beautiful and consoling words which we read in the antiphon of the _Benedictus_ in the Office for the Dead, declares that He Himself by His own power, and not merely by supplication to the Father, as she imagined (verse 22), is the author of our resurrection and life. In the following words He explains what He means. He who believes in Me, and dies in the living faith, which worketh by charity, even though he be _corporally_ dead, like Lazarus, shall live again a glorious life, even in his body; and everyone who is living _in the body_, and so believeth shall never die, because though he shall indeed pass through the gates of death, I shall quicken him again to a better life so that he may be said rather to have slept than died.(76) If this interpretation of the words, “shall never die,” seem to anyone strained, he may take them in reference to the death of the soul; but as there is question in the context of the raising of the _body_ of Lazarus, we consider the opinion we have adopted more probable. In these verses, then, Jesus declares Himself the resurrection and the life; the resurrection of the _dead_, the enduring life of the _living_. So that verse 25 encourages Martha to hope to have Lazarus restored to her, and verse 26 warns her to look to herself, in order that she may live for ever.