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.
