Today is the Fourth Sunday of Lent, Laetare Sunday, named after the entrance antiphon for today:
Laetare Jerusalem et conventum facite omnes qui diligitis eam; gaudete cum laetitia, qui in tristitia fuistis, ut exsultetis et satiemini ab uberibus consolationis vestrae. Psalm: Laetatus sum in his quae dicta sunt mihi: in domum Domini ibimus.
Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all who love her. Be joyful, all who were in mourning; exult and be satisfied at her consoling breast.
“Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all who love her”. We are at the mid-point of Lent, and today we take an opportunity, if only for a moment, to lift up our penitent heads to see the Easter that is approaching. While we are still in a penitential mood, that mood is slightly lifted today. Today is a day of hope. Even the vestments for today’s liturgies reflect that change in mood, not the deep penitential purple, nor the white we will see starting at Easter, but a mix of the two: rose (not pink).
It is in this context today, that we have the marvelous story from John’s gospel about the cure of a man born blind (John 9:1-41). As Jesus walks along, he sees a man who was blind from birth. The disciples ask Jesus, “Why was this man born blind? Was it the result of his own sins or the sins of his parents?” Jesus knows that neither the man nor his parents sinned to cause this. The real reason for his blindness was so that the glory and power of God would be made evident to everyone’s eyes, so that our own blindness could be cured.
The story emphasizes that the man was blind from birth. To heal him is to help him begin a completely new life, one that he had never before experienced. He now will be able to experience Jesus. We are that blind man. If we do not know Jesus, we, too, are living in darkness.
In the beginning of the story the man is blind, he cannot see. He is a beggar, he has nothing. He is an outsider, no one accepts him. He is a man without Christ in his life. But in the end, he is in the light, not just of his physical sight, but because a deeper insight opens him up to Jesus who is the Light of the world.
Jesus heals the man’s eyes. He uses mud and saliva. At that time, people believed that saliva could heal and, to some degree, they were right. By using mud, Jesus also helps us to recall God using mud to create Adam, the first man. Here, too, there is a new creation – Jesus is making a new person. Then, Jesus tells the man to wash in the pool of Siloam. This is, as it were, his baptism.
After his healing, his friends and his neighbors discuss his identity. Is it really him? He was blind since birth, but this man can see. The man has changed, and some of the people he knew cannot recognize him. So they take him to the Pharisees, the guardians of orthodox religion. Jesus healed the man on the Sabbath, they tell them, and the methods he used did not conform with the letter of the Law. Did Jesus sin because he broke the law by performing the miracle on the Sabbath, the people ask? But, they continue, what Jesus did was an act of love. For the Pharisees, sin is breaking any letter of the law, even the smallest letter; for Jesus, sin is doing an unloving thing, even if that unloving thing is doing nothing at all.
So the Pharisees ask the blind man for his opinion. For him, it is all perfectly clear: Jesus is a prophet, his actions are from God. He measures Jesus by what he did, not by what the law says. The Pharisees cannot accept this. If they accept, they have to accept Jesus and his teaching also. So they do not even accept that the man was born blind! Prejudice is a terrible thing. It can blind us even to facts that we can clearly see.
The Pharisees try to get the parents on their side. Maybe they will admit that the blindness was only temporary. But the parents know very well that their son was blind from birth, and they do not deny it, but they are afraid to say anything. They know that if anyone says Jesus is the Messiah, that person will be expelled from the synagogue and will no longer be part of the community. In such a tightly knit society, this is not a price they are willing to pay, not even for their son. Many Jewish converts to Christianity must have had the experience of being expelled by their communities. Christians, too, over the centuries, and down to our own day, have had this experience. So the parents say that their son is an adult. He can answer for himself.
The Pharisees again ask the man to tell the truth, meaning, to tell them what they want to hear. “We know that Jesus is a sinner. He cannot do these things.” This evaluation is based on their interpretation of the Law, which they regard as supreme.
Says the man, “I don’t know if he is a sinner. I do know I was blind and now I can see.”
The Pharisees again ask, “What did he do?” The man says, “I told you already. But you will not listen.” The man begins to mock them. He is more daring now, not afraid. “You want to be his disciples too?” he asks them.
Inevitably they become angry. They insult the man. “You are his disciple. We are Moses’ disciples. No one knows where that fellow [Jesus] came from.”
This is an example of Johannine irony, where people say things that have a meaning of which they are unaware: It is true that no one knows the origins of Jesus. He is the Word who has been with God from the beginning, and He is God. While this truth is not apparent to the Pharisees, to this simple, uneducated man, the truth is obvious, He exclaims: How strange! He cured me. Sinners cannot do such things. God does not listen to sinners. God listens to those who respect him and do his will. It has never been heard before that anyone cured a man born blind. If Jesus is not from God, he could not do this.
Pharisees now become very angry and say to the man “You were born and raised in sin. You want to teach us?” The words are cruel and indicate a refusal to accept that people can change and be transformed. We, too, often tend to condemn wrongdoers for the rest of their lives. But, fortunately for each one of us, that is not God’s way.
The Pharisees ultimately expel the man from the synagogue. This is what the parents feared, but their son is made of different stuff. This was the experience of many Jews who became Christians. And the experience of many others who were expelled by their families, relatives and society for choosing to follow Christ.
Jesus hears that the man has been expelled and goes in search of him. Jesus asks him: “Do you believe in the Son of Man, that is, the Messiah?” And the man replies, “tell me who he is, and I will believe in him.” He does not immediately recognize Jesus in the flesh, for it is the first time he has seen him with his new sight. Jesus says, “You have seen him. He is talking with you now.”
“I believe, Lord.” He sees not only physically now, but also with eyes of faith. He is now a disciple. A disciple is someone who knows and can see and accepts Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Jesus says, “I came to this world so that the blind could see and those who see become blind.”
The Pharisees ask Jesus, “Do you mean that we are blind, too?” Jesus responds: “If you were really blind [like the man], you would not have sin; but because you say, ‘We can see’, you are guilty.”
Those who sin, those who refuse to listen, those who are proud, they are the really blind people. The Pharisees, who thought they could see, were the real sinners. And the man, born blind, who accepts Jesus, is the one who can see.
At first reading, one might wonder about the relevance of the First Reading (Samuel 16:1, 6-7, 10-13) to the general theme of today’s Mass. The central lesson is that God chooses his own and does not judge by outward appearance. Samuel thought that the eldest son of Jesse, so tall, so handsome, must be God’s choice to be king. But eldest son was not God’s choice – God wanted the youngest, the shepherd boy David. In the Gospel, too, Jesus sees a future disciple in the blind beggar, and passes over the self-righteous Pharisees who, externally, seemed to be so devoutly religious.
Do not we also wonder why we have been chosen to enter Christ’s community when there would seem to be so many others more fitting. We need to wonder and give thanks that God’s way has been made known to us. And we give thanks most effectively by giving back to God the love he has shown us through the love we show to all our brothers and sisters, Christians and non-Christians alike.
The Second Reading (Ephesians 5:8-14) reminds us how we were once living in darkness but, through our Baptism, are now living in the light. We are, then, to be children of the light, to reflect that light which has been given to us. “You are the light of the world,” Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount.
We might say that we are only living in the light to the extent that God’s light shines in us and through us, giving light to others. “The fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true,” the reading tells us. But the good and right and true can only be seen when people are good and right and true. So, “take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness but instead expose them.” There should be no dark corners in our lives.
If we are people of the light, people of integrity, we are not afraid of the light, we have nothing shameful to hide. We are totally transparent. For most of us, that is something of a problem, but let us keep working to become people transfused with light, the light of truth and goodness and love.
For that we need to see Jesus and the Gospel ever more clearly. Then, let this be our prayer today, along with the beggar in the gospel: Lord, that I may see.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!