FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT
15 MARCH 2015
In
the Prologue of his Gospel, Saint John identifies Jesus as the Word, present
from the beginning, who is a light shining in the darkness. He goes on to explain that the Word, the
light, became flesh and made his dwelling among us. Today, Saint John explains how Jesus Christ
manifests himself as the light of the world in the course of his earthly
ministry.
Jesus picks
an ideal time. It is the Feast of
Tabernacles, a fall festival when faithful Jews pitched their tents in the field
as a reminder of their ancestors dwelling in tents in the desert in their
deliverance from slavery to freedom. The
priests would dip water from the Pool of Siloam with golden pitchers and pour the
water over the Altar in the Temple, brilliantly lit by burning torches. As their ancestors looked forward to their
arrival into the Promised Land, participants of the Feast of Tabernacles looked
for the arrival of the messiah.
Jesus picks
a man who has never seen any light to help him in this revelation. He dismisses the popular notion that the
man’s blindness was a result of sin, smears a mixture of clay and spit on his
eyes, and tells him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. For the first time in his life, this man sees
light. As he faces the reaction of those
around him, he begins to see the real Light of the world in the person of Jesus
of Nazareth. At first, he defends Jesus
as a good man who has been very kind to him.
As the Pharisees accuse Jesus of being a sinner for doing the work of
healing on a Sabbath, he identifies Jesus as a prophet. Finally, when he is thrown out of the
Synagogue, as many members of the Christian community of Saint John had been
thrown out of their Synagogues, he acknowledges Jesus as Lord and worships him.
The early
Church used this Gospel on the Fourth Sunday of Lent to help the Elect in their
final weeks of preparation for Baptism.
The Elect could easily identify with the anonymous man born blind. Like him, their eyes had been opened gradually
to the truth about him: that he is the
Light of the world, and that the Light given to them in Baptism can dispel the
darkness of their lives. This Sunday,
the four Elect of our parish hear these same words. At the 8:45 and 10:30 Masses, we pray the
Second Scrutiny over them, asking God to remove whatever may still keep them
from seeing fully the truth about Jesus Christ.
We pray that they prepare for Baptism at the Easter Vigil not because a
spouse or parent or friend brought them to the Catholic Church, but because
they have truly encountered Jesus Christ, the Light of the world.
The Elect
become an invitation for the rest of us to check our own vision of faith. Even though a lit candle was entrusted to us
when we were baptized, we must admit that we do not always allow that light to
shine through our thoughts, words, and actions.
Like Samuel, we sometimes judge other people according to their outward
appearance, instead of looking at them as God does. Or like the Ephesians, we can fall back into darkness,
instead of basking in the bright light of Jesus Christ and his way of living.
We wear
rose on Laetare Sunday to encourage us in the Lenten prayer, fasting, and
almsgiving we have undertaken. Those
Lenten disciplines have the potential to allow the bright fire of God’s love to
expose the darkness caused by our bad and sinful choices. The rose color reminds us that we are more
than halfway through Lent. Even if we
have not been entirely faithful to our Lenten commitments, there are still two
and a half weeks left in Lent to give us a chance to pick ourselves up and
start over. Lent can continue to open
our eyes more fully to Jesus Christ, the Light of the world. When we renew our baptismal promises at
Easter, we will understand more fully the truth that the Lord draws us to his
bright presence and out of the darkness of our failures to live our baptismal
promises.
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