The fourth Sunday of Lent is known as Laetare Sunday –
Rejoice Sunday – marking that we are more than halfway through our Lenten
journey and so we begin to anticipate the joy of the Risen Lord on Easter. We wear rose vestments not to celebrate a
birthday, but to celebrate the joy of the Risen Lord beginning to invade the
Lenten season as we have passed the halfway point in our journey to Easter.
Today we journey in the company of the blind man. It is the long, often painful, journey of a person
who is called to see life in a new way and as a result makes a new commitment. As his blindness was removed, the man could
now see. The gift of sight is a most
precious gift. But the real message of
this Gospel is greater than the gift of sight is the gift of faith. Jesus bestows not merely sight but a
faith-filled insight. The man born blind
eventually sees Jesus, but – a greater gift – he comes to see who Jesus really
is.
The man born blind is symbolic of the human condition. We need the continuing creation of God,
spreading mud on our eyes and washing in the waters of the pool of Siloam.
Again and again in the course of our spiritual journey, God’s
saving work, symbolically opening our eyes, but really opening our hearts,
happens through the One who is sent, Jesus Christ. In the second Scripture reading from the
Letter to the Ephesians, Paul challenges us to make this miracle our own: “You were once darkness, but now you are
light in the Lord. Live as children of
light.”
As we listen to the story of the man born blind, pray for the
discernment of how each one of us is able to have our eyes opened to see the
saving power of God calling us to a relationship with Jesus Christ. As the man born blind witnessed to “that man
they call Jesus”, we are to witness to a spiritual sightedness that was not
from birth, but one that we have learned through life experience.
The Scriptures invite us to reflect how has the season of
Lent has revealed to you your “blindness” and your need for Christ’s light,
Christ’s reconciliation?
As hopefully I advance in wisdom, age and grace, I can
recall experiences in my journey of life where a blindness has been removed,
and I can see more clearly the light of Christ.
In preparation for ordination to the priesthood, I spent 12
years in the seminary from age 14 to 26.
In those days, seminary formation was on the rigid side. Discipline was a high priority. In my seminary formation, I don’t recall any
faculty member asking if I have experienced the love of Jesus or the love of
another human being. My seminary
training was invaluable in learning some significant life values but the
relational side of life and spirituality wasn’t a high priority. The emphasis was on obedience and discipline
and rule-keeping.
It took some years of priestly ministry to come to the
experience of letting myself be loved and really valuing the relational side of
prayer and ministry. Being loved in
healthy ways opened my eyes to experiencing God’s love for me.
In your own journey of faith, how much have you opened yourself up to being loved? The spiritual sightedness we seek is to know
the depth of God’s love for us, how Jesus embraces us with open arms. I suggest we will not know the depth of God’s
unending love for us if we do not let ourselves be loved by others.
There is no way to over-emphasize the priority of knowing we
are God’s beloved sons and daughters.
This is the spiritual sightedness that the man born blind came to.
The real darkness in my life and in yours is not knowing how
much we are God’s beloved.
Another ongoing blindness that we can wrestle with is
control and telling God how we want our future planned, rather than opening up
ourselves to the sightedness of God’s plan for our life. Yes, God’s plan for your life and mine does
not include a free pass from the challenges of life. In
some form or fashion, the cross is going to be a part of your life and
mine. When we can trust in God’s love for us while
we are experiencing the cross the in our life,
we come to know the sightedness of the man born blind in the Gospel. The question is how much of our life plans
can we let go of, trusting not just another person but trusting the unseen mystery
of God’s unending love for us?
Trusting another is a most precious quality of the
friendships of our life. Even more so,
trusting in God’s unending love for us is the sightedness that overcomes much
blindness in our lives.
Trusting in God is easy to talk about, but it is a blindness
we struggle with in the face of the crosses of life that turn our life upside
down.
Another source of blindness can be in our in ability to find
our own voice, the courage to follow our own intuition, like the Samaritan
woman in last Sunday’s Gospel who went from being an outcast, an outsider to
being the person who invited others to come to know Jesus.
We have within ourselves the wellspring of eternal
life. May we have the sightedness to tap
into our inner voice, our inner strength.
This past week I had the privilege of sharing with some of our 15 year
old Confirmation candidates. It filled
my heart with considerable joy to listen to these teenage parishioners speak of
their desire to serve and to help others in visiting a nursing home and in
using their gift of music to bring prayer and joy into the lives of
others. They are beautiful witnesses of
God’s love that flows from deep within their spirit.
In our parish life, there were many more examples of people
finding their inner voice that comes from their journey of faith. But yes,
we need to be patient. God isn’t
finished with us yet. There is still
blindness in the eyes and hearts of each of us.
May the grace of this Lenten season continue to go with us
as we journey from spiritual blindness to living in the light and joy of the
Risen Lord.
Have a blessed day.
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