March 30, 2014: The Fourth Sunday of Lent
1 Samuel 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a: But the Lord said to Samuel: “Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature … Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart.”
Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
Ephesians 5:8-14: You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light, for light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth.
John 9:1-41: As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth. …
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March is the Month of St. Joseph
Scripture Notes from the Sourcebook:
THE FIRST READING: In this story of the anointing of David as king of Israel, we hear an important message – God looks not at appearances, but at the human heart. The least likely candidate for king in human eyes is precisely the one God has chosen.
RESPONSORIAL PSALM 23 is a much loved and comforting psalm. In the context of today’s liturgy, it points to the shepherd David’s call to shepherd (rule) God’s flock, Israel.
SECOND READING: Once you – we – were darkness, but now, because of our Baptism, we are light. Paul calls us to live as what we are and tells us how. Is the darkness overshadowing us? “Wake up!” he commands.
THE GOSPEL: John 9 opens with a premise that was a widely held view in Jesus’ day – affliction is punishment for sin. It is a view that Jesus corrects: NO, through this affliction, through the healing that he will bring about, the work of God will be seen. Note the cost of faith in Jesus: Expulsion from the synagogue. This was the case in the evangelist’s day, the lot of many Jews who had come to believe in Jesus. Sadly, our faith in Jesus can at times cost us as well.
PASTORAL REFLECTION: What is your greatest sense: Sight, hearing, taste, smell, or touch? Can you imagine going at least a day without the ability to utilize what is innately you? Even if it is just for one activity in your day, see if you can accomplish something that relies on each one of those senses without utilizing it. How do you smell roses, if you cannot smell? Or see your loved one if you do not have eyesight? Simple moments are priceless, yet the man in today’s account of the Gospel was branded sinful because he could not see, shunned by his parents for speaking the truth of healing, and also saved by a faith he was not taught, but claimed. Speak the truth when it is not easy to do so. Stand for a cause even without support. In doing so, you live today’s account of the Gospel, trusting what cannot be seen, but is made known.2014 Sourcebook for Sundays, Seasons & Weekends
Stepping into the Light: A familiar scenario in crime dramas occurs when a villain is cloaked in shadow and the hero issues a challenge: “Step into the light where I can see you.” Like Adam and Eve or the disciples in the upper room, we too prefer to hide in shadow because of our failings. Perhaps there is no better description of Lent than a journey from darkness to daylight. We step out of the shadows so that God can see who we truly are: Children of light, indeed the very light of the world in Christ. God of day and night, may we walk in darkness without fear and step into the light without hesitation. – Jerry Welte, from Lent: A Moving Experience
Gospel Commentary from the Irish Dominicans
John's gospel is shot through with imagery of light and darkness. In itself this imagery is open to being used in very facile ways, but John's use of it is complex and paradoxical. In today's reading, the man born blind receives his physical sight, but at a deeper level he also receives spiritual sight; whereas the Pharisees who had physical sight and were convinced they had spiritual sight become increasingly spiritually blind.
"I once was lost but now I'm found / Was blind but now I see," says the hymn Amazing Grace. We sense something presumptuous about this; it seems rather too clear-cut. Are you sure there is no darkness in you still? In reality we see and don’t see. "I believe; help my unbelief!" cried the father of the child in Mark 9:24. In the story of Saint Paul's conversion (Acts 9) the same paradox is evident. Paul did not leap up shouting joyfully, "Now I see!" Instead he was struck blind! Nor was it a case of being dazzled for a moment; he remained blind for three days. This mighty man had to be led by the hand like a child into Damascus and there he sat helpless, in darkness, for three days until someone else - a total stranger - restored his sight. Even then he did not go about shouting, "Now I see!" He went into the Arabian desert for three years. And even later, when he was in full spate, he could write, "Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known" (1 Corinthians 1:12).
Faith is knowledge, but it is dark knowledge. Its light is not a garish light but a dim light just sufficient to guide our path in humility. St Gregory of Nyssa (c. 332 A.D. - 395) wrote that John penetrated into the "luminous darkness," and could say, "No one has ever seen God" (John 1:18). Gregory delighted in this paradoxical expression, "luminous darkness", and used many similar ones: "wise folly", "sober inebriation", "stationary movement", "living death"…. Where could he have got the courage to use such expressions if not from the Gospel itself, which is full of paradox?
To claim to have more light than one has is a great sin against the light; it cheapens it for oneself and for others. "Now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains," Jesus told the Pharisees. When we speak of the Faith we have to do so with humility and with respect for the darkness. Like the blind man in today's reading we may have to be driven out of the company of those who think they see; and like Paul, led helpless by the hand along a humble path, or driven into the solitude of the desert - whatever it takes to rid us of our own brash light. God alone can penetrate the darkness. "Even darkness is not dark for you / And the night is as clear as the day" (Psalm 38).
--- Donagh O’Shea, for Today’s Good News, the website of the Dominicans of Ireland-________________________________________________________________________
BLINDNESS AS METAPHOR:
Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see
It’s getting hard to be someone, but it all works out
It doesn’t matter much to me.
--John Lennon
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We have flattered ourselves by inventing proverbs of comparison in matter of blindness,--"blind as a bat," for instance. It would be safe to say that there cannot be found in the animal kingdom a bat, or any other creature, so blind in its own range of circumstance and connection, as the greater majority of human beings are. …
― Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona
There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, and not a grain more. ... A man sees only what concerns him.
― Henry David Thoreau
PHYSICAL BLINDNESS AND SPIRITUAL SIGHT:
“People think my disability lies in mobility but it is really social mobility. I am socially immobilized by blindness but everyone seems to want to help me get from here to there. When I'm at church sitting in the pew no one takes notice of me. I get up to move and helpful people ask where do I want to get to. I'm in a church building. What is there to get to? I just want to talk to people. That is a difficult thing for sighted people to understand. …”
People still ask him, “What did you do that God made you blind? Hull says:
“Of course it is perfectly true that some kinds of sinning can ruin your health.
But to attribute sin to every sick person is to add a burden of social disapproval and guilt
to a person who is already suffering. I suppose I should have had the quickness to say to the man outside the restaurant, “And what great act of holiness did you do, to make you so healthy?”
John Hull received a letter, suggesting that a certain minister could heal him, and anyone else who was needy or “afflicted.” In his reply, John Hull writes: “… I do not interpret my blindness as an affliction, but as a strange, dark and mysterious gift from God. Indeed, in many ways it is a gift I would rather not have been given
and one that I would not wish my friends or children to have.
Nevertheless it is a kind of gift…
I am a Christian … My Christian life has been deepened since I lost my sight. This loss has helped me think through many of the values in living, and in a way I have learnt a greater degree of intimacy with God.
Your letter distressed me because it showed so little sensitivity
to the actual condition of blind people, and no awareness at all of the emotions and beliefs of Christian blind people.
You assume that everyone wants to be like you, a sighted person, and you do not recognize that people are called into various states of life, some of which they would perhaps rather not have had, but they grow in faith and realize that whether sighted or blind
they are in the hands of a merciful God…”
-- John Hull, blind teacher & author of Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness (Editor’s note: This is an awesome book! I recommend reading it.)
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“Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.” ― Helen Keller
Inside me there was everything I had believed was outside. There was, in particular, the sun, light, and all colors. There were even the shapes of objects and the distance between objects. Everything was there and movement as well. … Light is an element that we carry inside us and which can grow there with as much abundance, variety, and intensity as it can outside of us … I could light myself … that is, I could create a light inside of me so alive, so large, and so near that my eyes, my physical eyes, or what remained of them, vibrated, almost to the point of hurting … God is there under a form that has the good luck to be neither religious, not intellectual, nor sentimental, but quite simply alive.
― Jacques Lusseyran, And There Was Light: Autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, Blind Hero of the French Resistance
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Lusseyran, who was born in Paris, became totally blind in a freak accident at the age of 8, but adapted well and maintained close friends. At a young age, he became alarmed at the rise of Hitler and decided to learn German so he could listen to German radio broadcasts. After Germany invaded France in 1940, the 17-year-old formed a Resistance group with other students, engaging in nonviolent resistance work. In July 1943, he was betrayed by a member of the group and sent to Buchenwald with 2,000 other French citizens. Lusseyran helped motivate and sustain a spirit of resistance in the camp. When he was liberated, only 30 of the original 2,000 survived. After the war, he taught in the U.S and wrote books. Lusseyran died in a car accident with his wife in France, in 1971.
The Man Born Blind: Thoughts from the Saints
“And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth” (Jn 9:1). St. Augustine offers this allegorical interpretation: “The blind man here is the human race. Blindness came upon the first man by reason of sin: and from him we all derive it: that is, man is blind from his birth.”
“And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” (v. 2) St. John Chrysostom surmises that neither of these reasons explains his blindness: “the former, because he had been blind from his birth; the latter, because the son does not suffer for the father.”
Thus, “Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him” (v. 3). St. Augustine reminds us that we are born with original sin and that we add to that by committing sins. However, what Christ is saying is that “sin was not the reason why he was born blind.”
Was it, then, unjust that he should suffer from blindness? St. John Chrysostom replies: “Rather I should say that that blindness was a benefit to him: for by it he was brought to see with the inward eye. . . . Our Lord, by opening the closed eye, and healing other natural infirmities, demonstrated His own power.”
“He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay” (v. 6). St. John Chrysostom remarked in a homily: “He who had brought greater substances into being out of nothing, could much more have given sight without the use of any material: but He wished to show that He was the Creator, Who in the beginning used clay for the formation of man. He makes the clay with spittle, and not with water, to make it evident that it was not the pool of Siloam, whither He was about to send him, but the virtue proceeding from His mouth, which restored the man’s sight.”
“And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.” (v. 7) St. John Chrysostom says that He told the man to wash “that the cure might not seem to be the effect of the clay.” And he suggests that the Evangelist added the interpretation “Sent” for this reason: “to intimate that it was Christ’s power that cured him even there,” that is, at the Pool of Siloam, which was some distance away.
---Quotations from St. Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels Collected Out of the Works of the Fathers, Vol. IV, Part I (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1845).
If it can be verified, we don’t need faith…
Faith is for that which lies on the other side of reason.
Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden startling joys.
– Madeleine L’Engle
THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT: LAETARE SUNDAY
Each Mass has an entrance antiphon. … In times past, people gave a title to each Sunday’s Mass from the first word (in Latin) of the day’s antiphon. The antiphon for the Fourth Sunday of Lent is from the 66th chapter of the Book of Isaiah. It begins, “Rejoice, Jerusalem! Come together, you who love her.” In Latin, one of the words used for “rejoice” is laetare. So today is named Laetare Sunday. In biblical poetry, the city of Jerusalem is called our mother. Perhaps this means that Jerusalem is the source of our life. Christian poets have said that on earth we feel homesick for heaven, for the new Jerusalem. Deep down, we want to go home. In a wonderful and mysterious way, the Easter celebration is a homecoming. It is a march into heaven. Maybe that’s why there are so many processions in the liturgies of these days. Today, on the fourth Sunday of Lent, we are halfway to Easter.—Mary Ellen Hynes, Companion to the Calendar
MORE ON LAETARE SUNDAY: Strictly speaking, the Thursday before Laetare Sunday is the middle day of Lent, and it was at one time observed as such, but afterwards the special signs of joy permitted on this day, intended to encourage the faithful in their course through the season of penance, were transferred to the Sunday following. … The contrast between Laetare and the other Sundays is thus emphasized, and is emblematical of the joys of this life, restrained rejoicing mingled with a certain amount of sadness. – Advent.org
Reflection for March 30, 2014: THE MAN BORN BLIND
Many of our Lenten readings – and many of the stories in the Bible – concentrate on the notion of seeing. Which brings us to blindness, both the literal and spiritual kinds. I have trouble imagining anything more frightening than physical blindness, and yet to Jesus the worst kind of blindness is the kind that has its source in a person’s clenched and closed-down mind and heart.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus meets a man blind from birth. You can get an idea of the kind of life this guy has lived – and the way his disability was treated by his culture – by the fact that the very first question the disciples ask Jesus is, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Ouch. Jesus answers: “Neither he nor his parents sinned,” which is straightforward enough, but then he goes on to say something that isn’t nearly as easy to understand: “It is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.” Right, Jesus, the apostles respond, whatever that means, no doubt rolling their eyes and shrugging their shoulders. It is so much easier to believe that affliction is a punishment for sin. Then you not only don’t have to care about suffering, you can feel self-righteous about it. See the book of Job for an extended disquisition on this topic.
The notion that you can judge a person’s “rightness with God” by how healthy and happy and prosperous he is still thrives today. We still have oodles of so-called “Prosperity Churches,” which as near as I can tell measure God’s love for his people by how much swag those people have scored. In a system of this sort, somebody like say, oh, cartoon zillionaire Scrooge McDuck, comes out way above some barefooted loser like Francis of Assisi. (Not that God doesn’t love zillionaires, too.) Still, blaming the victim is popular because it is such a nice simple way to sidestep the Problem of Evil. You just won the lottery or inherited $3 million? That means God loves you! You got leprosy and your wife left you and your tent burned down and all your sheep died, and a half-hour ago, when your nose fell off and you bent down to pick it up, the guy that just stole your camel trampled your feet during his getaway, breaking three of your toes? Wow, that’s a lot of suffering. You must be a really, really, really Bad Person. Please go away.
If you think about it logically, of course, this philosophical system swiftly unravels. At least it ought to, if you’re a Christian. Consider Jesus: If you believe that affliction is caused by sin, you’d never to follow a man like him. I suspect that passersby of the more traditional sort walked by the cross and remarked snidely to one another, “Who sinned, this man or his mother Mary, that he is being crucified?” And yet who on earth has ever been more sinless? As much as it worries me, I’m afraid we’re never going to get the Problem of Evil on earth figured out, no matter how smart or holy we are, mainly because, as our First Reading says, “Not as man sees does God see.” Samuel knows what he’s talking about. I sure don’t have a clue about what God’s up to in this beautiful but utterly heart-breaking world of ours.
One advantage of blaming others for their own woes is that it lets the rest of us off the hook. I don’t have to worry about lepers anymore – not that I do so much these days, but you get the idea – because it’s their own fault. I don’t have to feel compassion for AIDS patients in Zimbabwe or dying babies in Sudan or the victims of the Holocaust or the people who died in the tsunami or the man with the emphysema or the still-youthful woman who is slip-sliding into Alzheimer’s. It’s all their fault! “They musta done somebody wrong,” to paraphrase the old blues song. And because it’s their fault, I don’t have to do anything to help them!
Jesus doesn’t see it that way. Jesus hardly ever sees things the way we do. He sees with the eyes of the heart – with the eyes of love. Instead of talking about who’s to blame for a problem, he rolls up his sleeves and gets to work solving it. Literally to work, using his strong brown carpenter’s hands, using his own flesh and blood and the ordinary earthly matter that’s under his feet. He spits on the ground and makes clay with his saliva and smears that clay on the blind man’s eyes and tells him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam. You couldn’t be any more down-to-earth or matter-of-fact than this. No wonder the Pharisees were taken aback. How could you invite a guy like this to a formal dinner party? There’d be no telling what he might do.
It’s never easy to live with a physical or mental disability, but in Jesus’ time it was regarded, quite literally, as a curse. That’s why most of the people Jesus cures are beggars: That’s the only way they can scrounge for a living. Remember the purity codes in Leviticus 21 regarding who is worthy to be a priest:
No one of your offspring throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the food of his God. 18For no one who has a blemish shall draw near, one who is blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, 19or one who has a broken foot or a broken hand, 20or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a blemish in his eyes or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles.
(OUCH!) Of course, that would rule out a lot of us. (I wonder how many self-proclaimed fundamentalist preachers – the kind who insist that we take every word of the Bible literally -- have voluntarily stepped down from the pulpit because they have faulty vision and have to wear glasses? Hundreds? Dozens? One or two? No, I didn’t think so.) And I suspect there was also a kind of unacknowledged resentment at the earthy simplicity of the cure Jesus offered: just spit, and dirt, and water, and the firm but gentle touch of a carpenter’s finger. Where’s the chorus of angels and the dramatic CGI-type special effects? There was nothing glamorous or ostentatious about the way Jesus healed the blind man, nothing you’d see on the 6 o’clock news or on the Internet; it was a humble, homemade, human approach to healing , a lot like something a peasant, or shepherd, or carpenter -- would do.
And the Pharisees could not cope with it. Have you noticed how fiercely they battle to keep their own eyes closed? They simply cannot, will not, accept what has happened. They argue with the man who was born blind, dispute his testimony, cross-examine him and his parents, more or less demand to see his I.D. because they refuse to believe he is who he says he is. Instead of feeling happy for the poor guy, they challenge the cure’s validity, wanting to throw the miracle out because they consider Jesus a “sinful man” who has no business performing miracles. As they reason, in an astonishing leap of un-logic, “How can a sinful man do such signs?” They are so determined to keep their minds closed that you can almost hear the raucous banging noise as they slam their internal shutters shut and hammer at them in rage. Their minds are already made up, you see; no facts will change them. And their hearts are completely closed; no room for compassion here. As Jesus said elsewhere in a powerful parable, “Neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.”
Unfortunately, we’re not that different from the Pharisees. We refuse to see what we don’t want to see; our minds are already made up, we don’t need the facts. And we are so tragically ready to judge one another, to decide who is worthy of our help, and even to dismiss those we don’t want to listen to – refusing to hear the message because we have already decided against the messenger. “Can a sinful man do such signs?” It’s easier to sit here stubbornly with our eyes squeezed tightly shut and our fingers crammed in our ears, singing as loudly as we can, “La la la, I can’t hear you!” We just hate it when someone challenges us. And no one challenges us more than Jesus.
Jesus, however, won’t give up on us. There’s work to be done, and he needs us to wake up and start paying attention. He needs us to open our eyes, to embrace the light. He says: “We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no man can work.” And he adds: “I am the light of the world…. I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.” It’s time for us to roll up our sleeves, and work while it is day. And ask, every day, for Jesus to open our eyes. In Jesus’ name. – Diane Sylvain