4th Sunday of Lent Year A 2023

 

4th. Sunday of Lent (A)

(1 Samuel 16:1, 6-7, 10-13; Ephesians 5:8-14; St. John 9:1-41)

 

There is an important, indeed extremely important, Christian truth heard in all three readings at Mass today.

In the first reading David, the ‘baby’ of his family, was chosen by God to be anointed King of Israel by the prophet Samuel in preference to his older, stronger, and more experienced brothers.

In our second reading St. Paul said:

You were darkness once, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light, trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.

And elsewhere, the same Apostle wrote to his converts in Corinth (1 Cor. 1:26-28):

Consider your own calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.  Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong,  and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something.

But above all, in the Gospel reading we heard Our Blessed Lord Himself say:

(The man) was born blind so that the works of God might be made visible (manifest) through him. 

God sent His only Son to become Man in order to save all mankind; and He uses certain human individuals to continue and help further that Messianic work of salvation, just as He had used the Israelites, His Chosen People, that they, through their divinely faultless exemplar and most beautiful human embodiment, Mary of Nazareth, and through their inspired prophets and holy, priestly, members might provide a home for the birth and early formation of His supremely Chosen One, His Messiah, His only-begotten Son,  sent by Him to become Man for the salvation of mankind.

But, isn’t that an awful thing to do: use people for your own purposes?

Of course it is wrong for any human being to use others in such a way, but that is not case with God, because He is our Creator, because He is Goodness, Truth, and Life itself, and, as Jesus once said:

I know that His command is eternal life.

 

Dear People of God, there are so many today with no love for God – their personal pride cannot countenance even the thought of obedience on their part – there are so many who are much given to speaking about what God should have done, what he (he, since he is no God for them) ought to do, or, in today’s case, what he should not do!

Our God, however, is a Father we are privileged and proud to obey, and He made us originally in His own image and likeness as the crown of His creation.  When Adam and Eve, using their God-given freedom of will, sinned against God through the deceits of the serpent, God allowed His only-begotten Son, Who was uniquely aware of His Father’s enduring love for us sinners, to become a Man for our salvation.  And, dear People of God, it is  because He loves us so very much, that God can and does use us for His own good purposes which are, precisely, most wisely intended for our own better being and ultimate salvation.

Notice how Jesus was most urgent about showing God’s good purposes in and through this born-blind man: for, without even pausing to ask the man if he had enough faith in Jesus’ power, He willed to begin His work; a  fact which showed that Jesus’ main intention was to do something urgently necessary for His Father’s loving plan of salvation, not something primarily of His (Jesus’) own immediate choosing:

We have to do the works of the One Who sent Me while it is day.  Night is coming when no one can work.

He set about curing the man, not as so often on other occasions with exhortations to faith and words of healing, but by relatively well-known actions (used by local healers etc.) now intended by Jesus to gradually draw the man along with, and into, His own purposes.

He made clay with the help of His spittle from the dust of the earth.  Now God had originally made man from the dust of the earth and Jesus was wanting to show that He – His whole life, indeed, not just this one occasion – was for the restoration and perfection of God’s creative activity:

            My Father is at work until now, so I am at work. (John 5:17)

He then smeared the clay over the man’s eyes to give him hope of healing; and then, to test his faithful obedience, told him to go  – still unseeing! – and wash himself in the pool of Siloam, whereupon, his cure would be completed, and God’s work would be most fully manifested in him and through him to all the Jews and Pharisees around, themselves so wilfully blind in spirit.

The pool of Siloam recalls for us the waters of baptism.   St. John, himself, interprets Siloam as ‘Sent’(9:7) referring to Jesus, ‘sent’ as the Christ for the salvation of the world; and, in Isaias (8:6) we are told that the Jews refused the waters of Siloam, just as they would later reject Christ Himself:

            These people have rejected the gently flowing waters of Shiloah.

And that pool of Siloam (Sent), dear People of God, can still be seen today, filled with water from the Virgin’s Spring. 

The man-born-blind obeyed:

            He went and washed and came back able to see!

‘He came back’ like the Samaritan cured of leprosy, to see and give thanks to Jesus, but Jesus had gone for the moment, and now was the time for the cured-man to give witness to his Healer. 

The Jewish officials repeatedly asked him how Jesus had cured him.  At first, not being suspicious of such authoritative and reputedly ‘holy’ people, he thought they wanted to hear again what he had already fully described, in order to rejoice in the wonderful work that had been done; but at their repeated questioning, and manifesting a more independent attitude than his fearful parents, he retorted:

            ‘I told you already and you did not listen,

and instead you went and troubled my parents.

            Why do you want to hear it again?  Do you also want to become His disciples?’

It would seem that this man born blind had been regularly taken to the synagogue for worship there and for instruction in the traditions of Israel, because he was in no way overawed by his questioners now; indeed he spoke in reply to them as one confident in, and well aware of, his Jewish upbringing and privileges.  Now, moreover, he was beginning, and indeed learning fast, to see into what he had always before unquestioningly assumed; that is, the assumed authority and apparent holiness of these prominent figures now addressing him:

The man answered and said to them, “This is what is so amazing, that you do not know where He is from, yet He opened my eyes.  We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if one is devout and does His will, He listens to him.

And now, dear People of God, we can perhaps be coming to understand perhaps why he had been ‘chosen’ by God; for, in the power of the Spirit of Jesus, he was beginning to show authentic ‘Christian,’ credentials, and was indeed risking a great deal by thus standing up for his healer:

They answered and said to him, ‘You were born totally in sins, and are you trying to teach us?’  Then they threw him out.

Out of the synagogue, that is, and out of official Jewish fellowship.

Whereupon,

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.

Dear People of God, notice how God quite amazingly brings the blind man into a measure of co-operation with His own purposes, for the born-blind man actually recognizes that he had been specially chosen by God the Father to witness to this extraordinary Man He has sent among men:

It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind.  If this Man were not from God, He would not be able to do anything!

And what was that most important work of God for which the blind-from-birth man was being used?   The manifestation of this sublime truth about Jesus:

            While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

This ‘ill-used and abused’ -- according to the modern supremely self-righteous critics of God, the ‘woke’ ones -- this unfortunate, born-blind man, had actually, in fact, had his eyes lit, as it were, by Him Who was the true Light of the World!!  Oh happy man, blessed far more than all those Pharisees and Jews around who could only see things of earth!  For his eyes, opened for the first time by Jesus, the Light of the World, were truly seeing eyes, and they led him, to recognize, believe in, and to worship, the Son of Man and Saviour of the world!

Later God would use the death of Lazarus, Jesus’ friend, likewise (John 11: 4):

            This is for the glory of God that the Son of God may be glorified through it!

However, our man-born-blind was, in a certain sense, even more blessed than Lazarus,  because our man-born-blind was led to actually co-operate in some positive manner with the glorification of Him Who was the Light of the World! 

Dear People of God, let God, ask God, to USE you!    Many in our society today are so very much aware of their human and personal rights … and thereby have made themselves far too proud and self-centred in their relations with God to ever allow themselves to be used for His purposes.   And there are others, of timid spirit, who cannot trust themselves to God’s purposes because they are ever fearful for themselves.

Both types are so wrapped up in themselves, be it for personal pride or for fear, that they cannot conceive our central Catholic and Christian truth that God is so good and does so love us that His very using us for His own glory and purposes always and -- humanly speaking one might say, inevitably -- brings us known (now) and unknown (as yet) personal blessings, for our having been humble enough, brave enough, to have allowed and committed ourselves to thus be of use to Him.

Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy will be done in us, for Thy glory and our blessing in Jesus our Lord and Saviour, by Thy most Holy Spirit of Truth and Love.  Amen, amen.