Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, A, Vigil
March 18, 2023
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided the short homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us as we mark the Fourth Sunday of Lent. In the Gospel, Jesus will cure a man blind from birth, but he works this miracle far differently from the many other times he cured those who had no sight. In the other cases, the blind men asked, in fact, cried out, begging for help. This Sunday, the blind man doesn’t say a thing. He’s just there, along the road, and becomes the object of a theological question from the disciples about the cause of his blindness. Jesus stated that the reason he was was blind from birth was to allow God’s works to show through him; his whole life in darkness until that point was so that he could encounter the saving power of Jesus and from that moment onward be a tremendously conspicuous example of God’s own light shining brightly through him. That truth influences the way Jesus performs this miracle, because Jesus had two healings in mind — first a physical one for him and then a spiritual one for him and for us all.
- The Lord Jesus first spits on the ground, makes mud with his saliva, and then goes up unbidden to the blind man and smears his eyes with mud. The blind man could have easily thought that someone was making fun of and abusing him, as probably happened often. But the Lord is not done. Jesus then tells him to go to wash in the pool of Siloam. The blind man could have reckoned, “What a stupid and pointless hassle! Wipe mud on my eyes and then send me, who can’t see, to wash in a pool, where I can easily fall in and drown.” Jesus, however, must have given that command in a way that inspired trust. By the man’s willingness to carry out this simple imperative Jesus gives him, the man embarks, without knowing it, on the great adventure of faith, on the exciting journey from darkness into light. Jesus allows this man, unlike the other blind men he cured — and this is the second difference from the other cures Jesus worked — to participate actively in his own healing, so that through the process, he might receive not just the ability to see the physical light of the world but also a much deeper light, the light of faith in Jesus, the true light of the world.
- Three-and-a-half weeks ago, Jesus did to us something similar to what he did to the man born blind in this Sunday’s Gospel. Someone acting in His Name smudged our foreheads not with muddy saliva but moistened ashes, and gave us a two-part command, the very same directive with which Jesus began His whole public ministry, “Repent and believe in the Gospel!” This was Jesus’ way for us to participate in our own healing during this blessed time of Lent, in our own coming from the darkness into his light, in our own exodus from sin to love, in our own Passover from death to life. We might have been tempted to consider this more or less an empty rite, something merely symbolic, but Jesus wanted to work in us during this time a true miracle of healing, through our participation and trust in this two-part therapeutic process.
- The first part of the cure of our blindness begins with repenting, which means turning away from the life of sin that blinds us. Sin darkens the intellect and distorts the will so that often we can no longer even see the good clearly or easily choose it when we do. The repentance that is part of our cure means recognizing that sin has left us partially or totally sightless, that we’re blind and that we need the Lord’s help to see. The second stage in our cure, Jesus told us on Ash Wednesday, is believing in the Good News. Jesus says to the man in the Gospel, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man’s physical cure — a miracle that caused a tremendous stir among the people in Jerusalem and allowed God’s works to shine in him — was merely a prelude to his spiritual cure that would involve not just leaving darkness, but living in the Light of Christ. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man responded with a faithful willingness, as well as a humble recognition that he needed help. “Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” “You have seen him,” Jesus replied, “and he is speaking to you now.” In the healing Jesus wants to carry out in us this Lent, he asks us the same question, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus is the Gospel incarnate, and “believing in the Good News” means believing in Him. With similar humility to the man healed by Jesus in the Gospel, we’re called to say, “Show me, Lord, that I may believe!” With that docility, the Lord can then show us, in new and deeper ways, “You have seen him and he’s speaking to you now.” He speaks to us in times of prayer, especially the extra prayer we try to make in this desert period of Lent. He speaks to us in Sacred Scripture and through the Church he founded. He speaks to us through our almsgiving, as he tells us, “I was hungry, thirsty, naked, a stranger, ill, imprisoned and otherwise in need and you cared for me.” He speaks to us in fasting, so that we may attune all of our appetites with gratitude to the physical and spiritual food he gives us. He speaks to us in day-to-day events, including in the midst of the war in the Ukraine, with concerns about the effects of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, with family members and friends sick and suffering, and all of the other struggles we may be enduring.
- To come to see Jesus anew, to hear him speak to us “now” in every moment of our lives, to come to look at all things with the Light of Christ — that is the whole point of the Lenten adventure of faith. These forty days are a gift from God to help us to leave the darkness caused by sin and see Jesus and all things as they really are, as he himself sees them. At a practical level, how is our vision supposed to change this Lent? What does it mean to be cured by Christ of our spiritual blindness and to see things in his own light? In order for us to appreciate the miracle Christ wants to work in us this Lent, I’d ask you first to think what it would have been like for that man born blind returning from the pool of Siloam. He had never seen anything, and now he could see everything. He could see colors. He could see the splendor of the temple. He could see where he was going. For the first time, he could see himself reflected in the pool. He could see the faces of those who were talking to him. He could see the face of Jesus. His whole life would have changed! A similar change is meant to happen to us when Christ heals our sight and makes it possible for us to see things with his light, to look at everything, including our crosses, through the lenses of faith, to see things as God sees them, and, therefore, to see all things accurately. Practically speaking, it means hearing Jesus say in the various events and people we encounter through the day, “You have seen him and he is speaking to you now.”
- Someone who shows us how to look at the world in the light of faith is Saint Joseph, whom the Church normally celebrates on March 19. Because the Fourth Sunday of Lent takes precedence liturgically over the Solemnity of St. Joseph, the Church this year has moved his feast to Monday. But it’s good for us to recall the example of the man God the Father chose to raise his Son according to his humanity, to protect his Son’s mother, and to raise us and protect the Church. At the beginning, St. Joseph, a just man, was blind to what God was doing with Our Lady, when she returned from the Visitation pregnant by some agency beyond him. He loved her. He venerated her purity. But she was nevertheless pregnant. He was planning to divorce her quietly lest she be stoned to death and was without question asking God what he should do when God spoke to him in a dream and told him not to be afraid to take Mary, his betrothed wife, into his home and to recognize that she was pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit. He began to see everything in a new light: Mary, Jesus whom he would name, as well as his own vocation. From that point forward, he centered his whole life on Jesus, the light who illumines everyone. He’s praying for each of us that we will similarly open up to how our life, too, is meant to be fully centered on Jesus, the savior of the world.
- The Fourth Sunday of Lent is always called “Laetare Sunday” because at this mid-way point of this season of conversion and penance, Christ wants to fill us with the joy with which he filled the blind man in Jerusalem. He came into the world so that his joy may be in us and our joy made complete. He wants to enter whatever darkness we may be experiencing and turn the lights on. He wants to help those preparing for baptism, and all of the baptized, to experience the beauty of his light and take confidence that the one who has conquered darkness and death is with us until the end of time. He wants to engage each of us, like he did the blind man in the Gospel, in a consequential and healing conversation that will continue until we are able to see Jesus face to face in the heavenly Jerusalem, where, with St. Joseph, our Blessed Mother and all of the saints, we will rejoice forever in the unending splendor of God’s eternal light. God bless you all!
The Gospel on which the homily was based was:
Gospel
His disciples asked him,
“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents,
that he was born blind?”
Jesus answered,
“Neither he nor his parents sinned;
it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.
We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day.
Night is coming when no one can work.
While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
When he had said this, he spat on the ground
and made clay with the saliva,
and smeared the clay on his eyes,
and said to him,
“Go wash in the Pool of Siloam” —which means Sent—.
So he went and washed, and came back able to see.
His neighbors and those who had seen him earlier as a beggar said,
“Isn’t this the one who used to sit and beg?”
Some said, “It is, ”
but others said, “No, he just looks like him.”
He said, “I am.”
So they said to him, “How were your eyes opened?”
He replied,
“The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes
and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’
So I went there and washed and was able to see.”
And they said to him, “Where is he?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
They brought the one who was once blind to the Pharisees.
Now Jesus had made clay and opened his eyes on a sabbath.
So then the Pharisees also asked him how he was able to see.
He said to them,
“He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see.”
So some of the Pharisees said,
“This man is not from God,
because he does not keep the sabbath.”
But others said,
“How can a sinful man do such signs?”
And there was a division among them.
So they said to the blind man again,
“What do you have to say about him,
since he opened your eyes?”
He said, “He is a prophet.”
Now the Jews did not believe
that he had been blind and gained his sight
until they summoned the parents of the one who had gained his sight.
They asked them,
“Is this your son, who you say was born blind?
How does he now see?”
His parents answered and said,
“We know that this is our son and that he was born blind.
We do not know how he sees now,
nor do we know who opened his eyes.
Ask him, he is of age;
he can speak for himself.”
His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews,
for the Jews had already agreed
that if anyone acknowledged him as the Christ,
he would be expelled from the synagogue.
For this reason his parents said,
“He is of age; question him.”
So a second time they called the man who had been blind
and said to him, “Give God the praise!
We know that this man is a sinner.”
He replied,
“If he is a sinner, I do not know.
One thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see.”
So they said to him,
“What did he do to you?
How did he open your eyes?”
He answered them,
“I told you already and you did not listen.
Why do you want to hear it again?
Do you want to become his disciples, too?”
They ridiculed him and said,
“You are that man’s disciple;
we are disciples of Moses!
We know that God spoke to Moses,
but we do not know where this one is from.”
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.
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.”
They answered and said to him,
“You were born totally in sin,
and are you trying to teach us?”
Then they threw him out.
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,
the one speaking with you is he.”
He said,
“I do believe, Lord,” and he worshiped him.
Then Jesus said,
“I came into this world for judgment,
so that those who do not see might see,
and those who do see might become blind.”
Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this
and said to him, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?”
Jesus said to them,
“If you were blind, you would have no sin;
but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.
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