Homily for John 9: 1-41 Fourth Sunday of Lent- Laudate Sunday. April 2nd, 2011
Today, although we are in the very middle of the Lenten Season, we pause for a Sunday of anticipation- today we anticipate and look forward to the joy of the Resurrection. Like many things in life, today is a paradox- here we are in the midst of a penitential season, a season when we mediate on the suffering and death of our Savior; and yet, we are called to be filled with joy. And so we celebrate early- using the Rose vestments, rose the color of joy, instead of the violet—the color of penitential sorrow.
Why this respite of joy in the midst of sorrow? Aren’t sorrow and joy incompatible? There are two reasons for this joy: first, Holy Mother Church knows that penance is difficult and desires for us to see the end- the joy of the Risen Lord. The efforts we have so far put into Lent are not done in vain, even if sometimes we fail. Even if our efforts don’t seem to be bearing much fruit, the Church wants us to know that our efforts, if they are sincere, can still lead us into a deeper relationship with our Lord, as we saw last week with the story of the Samaritan woman.
And the second reason is that the Church wants us to have this same joy in this valley of tears of this world; this joy is not incompatible with suffering. It is a joy that comes from always keeping our eyes on the future goal, heaven—an eternity of love in union with our God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit and with all the angel and saints. Joy in this life comes from living our lives with our eternity always in mind.
When we struggle during this season of Lent (and during the “Lent” of our lives in general) to reform our lives, we often encounter lots of paradoxes, such as, “ things seem to get worse before they get better;” or, “the further we grow in faith, the darker things can seem to become and the harder it becomes, as the more obstacles seem to appear in our path of holiness.” We saw these paradoxes in the life of many of the saints such as St. Therese the little flower and Blessed Mother Therese of Calcutta. They both spent the last years of their lives devoid of warm fuzzy spiritual feelings and consolations and full of contradictions and oppositions from both friend and foe; yet they were intimate friends with our Lord; one could say even one with Him; and so despite it all they were filled with joy, out of this world joy!
This life of paradox is certainly true of the man born blind whom we heard about in our Gospel today. The poor blind man had to spend his days begging for alms-a tough, hard life, spent in darkness and mostly discomfort, hunger--suffering. He is sitting and begging one day, with his hand stretched out into the darkness, hoping for just a few coins in order to buy some food, when Jesus passes by.
At first it would seem that Jesus ignored him since there is no mention of Jesus even noticing the man. This would be natural, as a “good” Jew believed that anyone suffering from physical illness was doing so because of their personal sin and so deserved their fate…so why bother. And so, the disciples must have assumed that Jesus passed this blind man by because he was nothing but a poor sinner, who certainly had no faith and was suffering justly from his sins.
And so the disciples decided to take the opportunity to ask Jesus one of those nagging questions that we all have in the back of our minds- who is at fault? Was it he or his parents who sinned and caused this man to be blind? We heard this type of question with regard to the people of Japan? Did they “do” something to deserve this? It is really a question about evil.
The truth is, is that Jesus in fact did not ignore the man. As a divine person Jesus already peered into this man’s heart and saw that this poor blind man had a heart open to faith. Jesus also knew the question that was on the minds of his disciples; and so purposely, he appeared to pass this poor man by so that He could use this occasion and the evil of this man’s blindness to show the power, the goodness and the mercy of God. Paradoxically, Jesus was going to use evil, which is an absence of good, like blindness is an absent of sight, to manifest and point to ultimate goodness.
And so, Jesus makes a mud that he puts on the blind man’s eyes and tells him to go and wash in the pool. Mud in your eyes- one might think it would only damage further the eyes. Wouldn’t a natural reaction be, “Get that stuff out of my eyes- it hurts!”? Yet, the poor beggar obeys Jesus in faith and washes in the pool. Yet, a paradox- he washes and is healed; blind he now can see; mud instead of dirtying, cleanses, clears instead of smudging; and the invisible faith hidden in the man’s heart and mind is brought out and made visible to all who care to see.
Yet, in the goodness of healed vision and restored faith, immediately this man has his new faith put to the test by obstacles. The man who once was blind now sees and everyone is questioning him about what happen. People really didn’t know what to think, so they turned to their leaders, the Pharisees, who were supposed to have the faith and who were suppose to “see” things clearly.
Yet, in another paradox, the Pharisees, men of ‘faith’ don’t have any-they who can see with their human eyes, have the worst kind of blindness because they are unable to see with the eyes of faith, unable to see the truth about who this Jesus really is. The poor beggar, who is not well trained in the Law, has to endure the integration of this group of lawyers, who are well trained and smoothed tongued. To make things worse, they call his parents to testify about the matter. Paradoxically, the ones who should stand behind him the most, almost disown him. One might think that they would be happy to see their son healed and able to see. And after living their whole lives thinking that it was their sin, which perhaps was the cause of their son’s blindness; one would think they wouldn’t have cared what anyone now thought.
And so the poor man who was once an outcast because of His blindness is now paradoxically again all alone, seemingly with no one around to help… Yet, now that He had his faith he discovered he was not alone at all. Now He has hope for God is with Him. And with God, the poor man is able to confound even the Pharisees. They for their part get angry and throw him out. On the surface this seems like a terrible blow- a very dark moment in his life, yet it again paradoxically was the greatest moment of His life, for he now was able to testify and to suffer for the Name of this man Jesus, the who not only healed him of His blindness but gave to Him the eyes of true faith and so hope in the midst of the darkness of the world.
It is at this moment when Jesus reveals Himself to the man, who immediately makes an act of faith and worships Jesus. Suddenly, all the paradoxes are explained. Those who were able to see were really blind and the one who was blind really saw or said in more plain terms, the ones who were supposed to have faith did not and the one who was supposed to be without faith, has faith. And this blind man with his new faith has it put to the test but only so that his faith may be strengthened even more and His love of God increased.
For us, it may be the same. The more we try to grow in faith, the more it seems to get worse. The better we try to become, especially in the little things, the worst we seem to become. And when we begin to make our faith and our relationship with Jesus and draw closer to Him, the more obstacles we face and the more we can be attacked, and our families and even our dearest friends can behave like the parents of the blind man and want to disown us.
Yet, if we desire to follow Jesus and are obedient to His requests, we can know in faith that if we experience these paradoxes and contradictions from the world we are in the right place. It may be dark and difficult for us, however, we must know that our faith is being tested, but tested in order to grow and be purified as gold is purified by the trial of fire. And here is where the paradoxes of our faith and even our life become the most profound. To save our live we must lose it; He who humbles himself will be exalted and he who exalts Himself will be humbled; He who has much grace, more will be given to him, the one who has little, even what he has will be taken away from him; the more we give the more receive; the way to happiness, joy and eternal life is the way of the cross, bitterness, suffering and self defeat; and finally, it is dying that we are born to eternal life.
Let us ask our Lord today, as we celebrate with joy the half waypoint of this Lenten season, that we might have our faith strengthened and deepened in order to truly see. But first, we must recognize that we are the blind man and so turn to the Lord that we may healed of our blindness and see. If we are to see then, if we are not to remain in our blindness, we must have frequent intimate contact with the One, the only one, who can heal us. And this One is Jesus truly present in the Holy Eucharist.
The more our blind eyes behold His glory hidden behind the veil of the Whiteness of the Host, the more clearly we can see. Like the eye is blind without the light of the sun, so the eyes of faith are blind without the eyes of the Son; And the true Son is the Holy Eucharist, the Light of the World!
The Center of the prayer “The Hail Mary” is the Eucharist, and so let us pray, Our Lady, cause of our Joy, pray for us, help us keep our eyes on Jesus, truly, really, physically present in the Holy Eucharist; He is our true Hope and our true Joy; He is literally our Heaven and so our happiness both in this life and in the life to come! Amen.
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