The Lord’s Lenten Cure of Our Blindness, Fourth Sunday of Lent (A), March 19, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year A
March 19, 2023
1 Sam 16:1.6-7.10-13, Ps 23, Eph 5:8-14, Jn 9:1-41

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• In today’s Gospel, something very different happens than in all the other miracles in which Jesus cured those who had no sight. First, unlike in the other cases, the blind man doesn’t cry out for help. He’s just there, along the road, and becomes the subject of a theological question from the disciples about the cause of his blindness. Jesus states that the reason that man 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 conspicuous example of God’s own light shining ever more 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 spits on the ground, makes mud with his saliva, and then goes up unbidden to the blind man and smears his eyes with mud. What must the blind man have been thinking? What would your reaction be, for example, if you were praying here with your eyes closed and someone else suddenly came up to you from behind and put muddy saliva on your eyelids? The blind man in the Gospel could have easily thought that someone was making fun of him or 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 easily could have thought, “What a stupid, pointless and dangerous hassle! Make me dirty and then send me, who can’t see, to wash in a pool, where I could easily fall in and drown!” Jesus, however, must have given that command in a way that inspired trust. By his 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 something to us similar to what he did to the man born blind in today’s Gospel. We went up to someone acting in His Name, who 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’ pathway for us to participate in our own healing during this blessed time of Lent, in our own coming from the darkness into the light of Christ, in our own exodus from sin to love, in our own Passover from death to life. Some might be tempted to consider this more or less an empty ritual, something merely symbolic — especially if we are blind to our own sinfulness! —  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 pathway for the cure of our blindness begins with repenting, which means turning away from the life of sin that blinds us. As the Catechism and human experience teach so clearly, 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 see it. 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. This conversion means becoming aware, as St. Paul helped the Ephesians to see in today’s second reading, that we have taken part in “vain deeds done in darkness,” and are called to “condemn them.” God allows us to be smudged with ashes and sent on a spiritual journey to wash ourselves in the “second baptism” of the Sacrament of Penance that begins the healing process, and in which we condemn ourselves for those vain, dark needs. At the end of that beautiful sacrament, God says to us, like he said through the St. Paul said in the second reading, “Awake, O Sleeper, arise from the dead and Christ will give you light.” We arise from the spiritual death and blindness of sin into the new light and life of Christ.
• The second stage in our cure, Jesus told us on Ash Wednesday, is believing in the Gospel. Jesus says today to the man in the Gospel, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The physical cure of the man — 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 the spiritual cure of the man that would involve not just leaving darkness but living in the Light of Christ. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man responds with a faithful willingness, as well as a humble recognition that he needs help: “Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” “You have seen him,” Jesus replies, “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 Gospel” 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.” To come to see Jesus anew, to hear him speak to us “now” in every moment of our lives, to look on 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. So often we can think we see Jesus and hear his voice, but we can be blind and deaf to the true meaning of his presence. The Pharisees, after all, saw Jesus physically, but they never really saw who he was. They watched him perform many miracles, they heard his beautiful teachings and powerful responses to every attempt to trip him up, but still, when they looked at him, they were blind to the reality of his true identity. They thought they had him figured out, they thought they had all the answers, but they were blind. So often we can behave like they did, thinking we have Jesus all figured out, boxing him into an unthreatening corner of our lives, categorizing him and his teachings in the way that will least challenge us to true conversion. Seeing according to human perspectives rather than in God’s light can happen even to great saints, as we see in today’s first reading. The Prophet Samuel, one of the greatest men of God in the Old Testament, was sent to Bethlehem to anoint the son of Jesse whom God would indicate to be the King of Israel after Saul. When he arrived, he was convinced upon seeing Eliab that he was the one the Lord wanted anointed. But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t look on his appearance, for the Lord does not see as mortals see.” The Lord would have him go through all of Jesse’s sons until he would meet the youngest and ruddiest son, David, who would become the great king and ancestor of the Lord Jesus according to the flesh. Even if we’re close to the Lord, we, like Samuel, like Peter in Caesarea Philippi after Christ revealed he would be a suffering Messiah, can see things too much by human categories rather than God’s. And if we’re not truly close to the Lord, there’s the greater risk that we will go through life perceiving reality according to our darkness rather than according to God’s Light. Rather than seeing things properly in faith, we can look at others, at events, and issues in the same way people without faith do. And then instead of walking and living as children of the light, as St. Paul summons the Ephesians and us today to do, we live and walk like practical atheists. Each Lent Jesus helps us to recognize, again, that our sins number us among the blind, but that he wants to cure us, to have us walk together with him in the light of life, to help us to see all things in and together with Him who is the Light of the World.
• 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? To appreciate the miracle Christ wants to work in us this Lent, it’s helpful 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. He could see himself reflected in the pool. He could see the faces of his parents and those who were talking to him. He could see Jesus. His whole life would have changed! A similar change is meant to happen to us when Christ heals our sight and helps us to see things with his light, to looking at everything 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.” It means seeing him speaking to us in the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. It means seeing him desirous to forgive us in the Sacrament of Confession. It means seeing him in each other and in the poor. It means seeing him with us as we encounter the resplendent heights and dark valleys of human life.
• Someone who shows us how to look at the world in the light of faith is Saint Joseph, whom the Church normally celebrates today on March 19. Because the Fourth Sunday of Lent takes precedence liturgically over the Solemnity of St. Joseph, this year the Church 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 and protect his Son’s mother, as well as 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 and he at first naturally didn’t see it in a miraculous light. He was planning to divorce her quietly lest she be stoned to death and was without question asking God what he should do. God then intervened, indicating to him in a dream not to be afraid to take Mary, his betrothed wife, into his home and to recognize that she was with child by the power of the Holy Spirit. He began to see everything in a new light: he saw Mary in a new light, the blessed Fruit of her womb whom he would name in a new light, even himself and his own vocation with far greater clarity. 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 and light of the world.
• To live in the light of God’s presence is to live in joy, for Christ came into the world to shatter the darkness and so that his joy may be perfected in us. The Fourth Sunday of Lent is always called “Laetare Sunday” because at the 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. We ask the Lord to remove the scales from our eyes, so that we can see everything with His own eyes in the light of faith. In a special way, we ask him to help us to see with his own eyes what is about to happen, as we participate live in the Last Supper, in Jesus’ own passion and death, and share right now on earth in his Resurrection as we receive His Risen Body. If Christ were to grant us his eyes, we would see all the angels and the saints about to hover around this altar. We would recognize that we are about to share in the greatest event in all of history, the greatest love the world has ever seen or imagined, the deepest source of joy we could possibly ever have, which the world cannot give or rob. Jesus says to us here live, “Do you believe in the Son of Man whom you have seen and who is speaking to you now,” as he says “This is my body given for you … This is the chalice of my blood poured out for you for the forgiveness of your sins?” Faced with these ineffable realities, may we take our cue from the illuminated man in the Gospel and say, with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, “I do believe, Lord” and bow down to worship.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel
JN 9:1-41

As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth.
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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