March 19th 2023. Fourth Sunday of Lent
GOSPEL: Jn 9:1, 6-9, 13-17, 34-38
Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini broadcast on Vatican Radio
Don Fabio’s homily follows the Gospel
GOSPEL: Jn 9:1, 6-9, 13-17, 34-38
As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth.
He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva,
and smeared the clay on his eyes,
and said to him,
“Go wash in the Pool of Siloam” — which means Sent —.
So he went and washed, and came back able to see.
His neighbours and those who had seen him earlier as a beggar said,
“Isn’t this the one who used to sit and beg?”
Some said, “It is”, but others said, “No, he just looks like him.”
He said, “I am.”
They brought the one who was once blind to the Pharisees.
Now Jesus had made clay and opened his eyes on a sabbath.
So then the Pharisees also asked him how he was able to see.
He said to them,
“He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see.”
So some of the Pharisees said,
“This man is not from God, because he does not keep the sabbath.”
But others said,
“How can a sinful man do such signs?”
And there was a division among them.
So they said to the blind man again,
“What do you have to say about him,
since he opened your eyes?”
He said, “He is a prophet.”
They answered and said to him,
“You were born totally in sin,
and are you trying to teach us?”
Then they threw him out.
When Jesus heard that they had thrown him out,
he found him and said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
He answered and said,
“Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?”
Jesus said to him,
“You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.”
He said, “I do believe, Lord,” and he worshipped him.
The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
i) The blind man represents all of humanity. We are all wounded and in need of the creative touch of Jesus which brings divine light to the dark parts of our lives.
On this fourth Sunday of Lent, we encounter the theme of rediscovering the light of faith. The passage is taken from John, who, at the beginning of his Gospel, speaks of the true light coming into the world. There is a true light and a false light. In the first reading, we hear of the election of David, who is chosen despite his appearance, despite the fact that his own father does not consider him. God does not see what man sees. Man looks at appearance while God looks at the heart. The second reading speaks of being children of the darkness or of the light. We are called to have a life that springs from the divine light. The Gospel recounts the story of the man blind from birth. According to the Church fathers – Augustine in particular – this man represents humanity in general. People ask why he is blind. We tend to think in terms of cause and effect, we think that this man’s sin is a direct result of some sin or other. Jesus replies with the strange saying that the blindness is not the result of the man’s sins, nor those of his parents, but rather is the case so that the work of God can be manifested. The things that are difficult to understand in life are not amenable to mechanistic explanations; we should ask what God can do in such situations.
ii) Jesus touches us with his grace in the wounded parts of our lives. After this encounter, we are sent on our mission to profess the light that we have experienced
Jesus takes clay and saliva and “anoints” (in the Greek text) the man with this mixture in the very place where he is wounded. This mixture of clay recalls the creation of man who was fashioned from clay. What Jesus is doing is an act of creation. Just as this man was born without sight, so too all of us are born with a lack of grace. By means of the pains and sufferings of our lives, we are led to these moments of grace. The man is then told to bathe in the pool of Siloam, which means “sent”. We too are sent on our mission after we encounter the grace of God. In the narrative that follows, the man is challenged by various people who try to take away his faith is Christ. Even though the man is not assisted by his parents, he becomes more and more proficient in defending his faith against his accusers.
iii) In this fourth Sunday of Lent, let us realize that the darkness of our lives is a call to open ourselves to the light of God, to open ourselves to his power which can transform our darkness into light. He can take the things of our lives that we have never understood and turn them into a mission, an adventure, a moment of growth.
We too must defend the light of salvation that has entered into our lives. Each one of us would not have remained Christians if we did not have an experience of this divine light. Today it is very easy to leave the Church. If we have remained, it is because we have a reason for doing so. We have experienced grace, gift, mercy. We must confront the challenges and doubts the world puts before us in order to grow. Difficulties are always opportunities for growth. Suffering is not only suffering, it also becomes wisdom if it is accepted. Tribulations are also moments of training and learning. Without tribulation there is no learning. A process of learning like what we see in this Gospel is what can lead to faith in Christ. The true light is the mercy and love that we have received, which comes to touch the most wounded parts of our lives. Then, we are called to defend this light, to defend our experience of grace, to become wise advocates of our faith in this world which has such need of witnesses. In this fourth Sunday of Lent, let us realize that the darkness of our lives is a call to open ourselves to the light of God, to open ourselves to his power which can transform our darkness into light. He can take the things of our lives that we have never understood and turn them into a mission, an adventure, a moment of growth.
ALTERNATIVE HOMILY
The healing of the blind man in chapter nine of John’s Gospel can best be understood by reading the accounts in chapters seven and eight of Jesus’ presence in Jerusalem during the Festival of Tents (I encourage you to read below Don Fabio’s full account of this important context). During the festival, Jesus makes two pronouncements. Firstly, he invites everyone who thirsts to come to him and drink. Secondly, he declares that he is the light of the world. These two elements, water and light, were essential to the Jewish celebration of the festival, and they are combined in the healing of the blind man. Jesus anoints the man’s eyes with saliva and clay. It is impossible to speak without saliva, so the saliva of Christ clearly represents God’s word. In this image of saliva and clay, we have an unambiguous symbol of creation. In Genesis, God’s word acts on the dust of the earth to create humanity. With the healing of the blind man, Jesus shows that he is completing his creation of this person by bringing him to the light. But the healing is not completed until the man goes to bathe in the pool whose name signifies “sent”. And then the man truly becomes “sent”! He proclaims the good news of his healing and even defends Jesus to the point of being expelled from the Temple. To summarize: each one of us has painful and difficult aspects of his life, just like the man born blind. Jesus wishes to act on these very areas with his word. When we allow Christ to touch these areas, when we bathe in the waters of regeneration (in other words, allow the Holy Spirit to operate in us), then these things are transformed, they are illuminated by the light of Christ, and they become the place where we proclaim the good news of God’s love for us. We discover that the absurd areas of our lives are the very places where we learn to trust, to love. None of us can be said to be truly educated in the faith until we have made peace with the things we have not understood about our lives. We need to discover that those difficult elements in our personal existence were needed in order to encounter the Lord. These things will serve us all our lives to be instruments of the Lord, to be the way of his love, the way of his light. In this way, the “blind” find their sight, whilst whoever thinks he can see, so the Gospel passage tells us, will become blind. Those who are in love with their own interpretations of everything, those who do not accept an alternative reading of their lives, remain blind.
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