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 Celebration of the Resurrection-Easter. 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 our personal sin and 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 violet—the color of penitential sorrow.
Why this respite of joy in the midst of sorrow and suffering? Well one reason I think is that the Church knows that penance is difficult for us. And so we don’t become discouraged in our efforts to change, the Church desires for us to see the end, the goal—that is the joy of our celebration of the Risen Lord and His victory over sin and death. The Church knows that not only is our Lenten penance difficult but so too is our entire life as well…it so hard for us to change for the better. She wants us to know that the efforts we have put into Lent so far are not done in vain, even if sometimes, many times, we have failed. 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…
A reporter once asked our Pope Emeritus Benedict why life was filled with so many contradictions. Benedict responded by saying it isn’t, but it is full of many paradoxes that only seem to be contradictions. When we struggle during this season of Lent (and during our lives in general) to reform our lives, we often encounter lots of paradoxes. For instance, things seem to get worse before they get better; in order to learn to walk we have to fall a lot; the further we grow in faith, the darker things can seem to become and the more obstacles seem to appear in our path of holiness; the more we pray, sometimes the harder and dryer our prayer becomes.
We saw these types of 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 any 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. They both had to suffer much interior and exterior oppositions; at points it even seemed God had all but abandoned them. But in their sufferings they paradoxically had at the same time, lives of heavenly joy. All the sufferings and contradictions were paradoxes because far from being signs of abandonment from God, or punishments from their sins, these struggles were instead proofs of the extreme closeness of God, or in spiritual terms, the spiritual espousal or mystical union of their soul with God. In other words, God actually used their spiritual struggles and the struggles of their lives to increase and purify their desire for Him alone, instead of desire only good feelings or spiritual consolations that come from Him. And so paradoxically they found that peace and joy that this world cannot give in the cross. In the very midst of their great sufferings and struggles their lives manifested the great goodness and mercy of God.
This life of paradox is also certainly true as well with the man born blind in our Gospel today. The poor blind man had to spend his days begging for alms-a tough, hard life, spent in darkness, loneliness and mostly in discomfort, hunger--suffering. And so he is sitting and begging on day, with his hand stretched out into the darkness, hoping for a just a few coins in order to buy some food, when Jesus passes by.
At first it would seem that Jesus ignores him since there is no mention of Jesus even noticing the man. This would seem to be a natural reaction as a “good” Jew believed that anyone suffering from physical illness was doing so as a result of their personal sin and so deserved their fate…so why bother to get “involved” they were suffering the just deserts of their sin, sleeping in the bed they made so to speak.
Seeing Jesus walk by, 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 again, was suffering justly from his sins, or at least from the sins of His parents. And so the disciples decided to take the opportunity to ask Jesus one of those nagging questions that we all can have in the back of our minds when someone, even ourselves suffers- who is at fault? Was it he or his parents who sinned and caused this man to be blind? Did he, or did they “do” something to deserve this? And subconsciously hidden in these questions, the following, “God what did I do to deserve this?” Why me?
Jesus, however, of course, didn’t ignore the man. As a divine Person Jesus had already peered into this man’s heart and saw that this poor blind soul had a heart open to see through the eyes of 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, but only 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, and to do so through many paradoxes.
Paradoxically, Jesus uses evil, which is the absence of Good, like blindness is an absent of sight, in order to manifest and point to ultimate goodness. Jesus uses mud to cleanse; He heals an unlearned faithless blind man in order to show that the learned, the Pharisees, are really the unwise, blind leaders with no faith. They are truly the blind, because they are unable, unwilling, to see with the eyes of faith that Jesus really is God before them; and so they can’t lead God’s people because they don’t know the One to whom they should lead them to…they are truly blind guides, like so many in our own day.
Jesus however, doesn’t just use paradoxes to shame the Pharisees in order to show forth the goodness of God. He goes on to use the paradox that now this new man of faith, who once suffered in his blindness, now suffers in his sight by being interrogated by the blind Pharisees and even abandoned by his parents. Because of Jesus the poor man who was once an outcast because of His blindness is now again, it seems, an outcast- all alone, seemingly with no one around to help. On the surface this seems like a terrible blow- another very dark moment in the life of this man who had so much darkness in his life already. Yet paradoxically, it was the greatest moment of His life. Now that He had his faith, even with it being tested by obstacles, he discovered he was not alone at all, God was with Him; He shared in Christ own sufferings, in the cross of Christ and so he began to share in the victory of Christ. In this he had hope and so he could endure all that would come his way and do so with the joy and peace which surpasses feelings and emotions or lack there of, and which goes to the depth of one’s soul, one’s very being. And so the once blind man who could now truly see was able outwit his integrators and testify in his sufferings to Jesus, the one who not only healed him of His blindness but gave to Him the eyes of true faith and so true hope in the midst of the darkness and blindness of the world.
It is at this moment when Jesus again visits the blind man and reveals Himself to the man—the man who was blind now sees not just Jesus the man, but Jesus the God. He then immediately falls to his knees and 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.
You see, for us it may be the same; our lives, especially our lives of faith are full of seemingly contradictions. The more we try to grow in faith, the more it seems to get worse. The better we try to become, even in the little things, the worst we seem to become. And when we begin to make our faith and our relationship with Jesus primary in our lives, the more we draw closer to Him, the more obstacles we can face and the more attacks we can experience, the more our families and even our dearest friends 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, given to us through His Church, 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 now or in the future; however, we must know that our faith is merely being tested but only so that it can grow stronger, so that we can grow in deeper love with our Lord-God has not abandoned us, we are not alone. With this truth in mind, we see that the obstacles, contradictions and even our failures are really paradoxes, in which, if we let Him, Jesus will reveal and manifest to us the mercy and goodness of God. And in these sufferings, we will also find in the depths of our souls that peace and joy that we long for and that only God can give—this is the power of the resurrection working in our lives.
We will also better understand the great paradoxes of the faith; it is in our weakness that we are strong; the harder it is to pray the more powerful and pleasing to God our power is; to save our live we must lose it; 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 more we give up our freedom to our Lord, the more we are truly free; the way to happiness, joy and eternal life is the way of the cross, bitterness 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 way point of this Lenten season, that we might have our faith strengthened and trust deepened in order to truly see in our lives the goodness and mercy of God. But first, we must recognize that we are the blind man in today’s Gospel and so in humility and poverty turn to the Lord in Confession that we may healed of our blindness and be open to spiritual sight. Then, if we are to see, 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. Another paradox, the more our blind eyes behold His glory hidden behind the veil of the Whiteness of the Host, the more clearly we can see the God hidden there. Like the eye is blind without the light of the sun s-u-n, so the eyes of faith are blind without the Light of the Son S-O-N; And the true Son is the Holy Eucharist, the Light of the World!
Let us ask our Holy Mother Mary to lead us to more closely to Jesus in the Eucharist so that we might be heal of our blindness in order to see through the eyes of faith, that He is really there; in the Eucharist our God is really with us in our struggles and in the darkness, leading us always to the light of His truth and the freedom of His love.
The Center of the prayer “The Hail Mary” is Jesus and Jesus is the Eucharist. Mother of God, Blessed is the fruit of thy womb—the Holy Eucharist. In this you are the cause of our Joy, so pray for us and help us keep our eyes on the fruit of your womb Jesus, truly, really, physically, personally, present in the Holy Eucharist; He is our true Hope and our true Joy; He is literally our Heaven and so our true happiness both in this life and in the life to come! Amen.
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