Lent 4th Sunday Year A
Photo by Fr sunny John from Metropolitan Museum
Physical and spiritual Blindness
My dear brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ,
In a certain home, a father once called for a meeting with his twelve-year-old son. Father wanted to talk about fairness in the home! “Son,” began the father, “when you look at the way responsibilities are shared in this home, don’t you think you and I are unfair to your mother and two sisters in that they do most of the work in the home?” When we wake up in the morning, the house is swept, breakfast prepared and afterwards all the dishes cleaned. And when you come home from school, you find lunch already prepared. After lunch the dishes are cleaned and preparations for supper begin. Water is fetched and so is firewood. Then supper is ready, you and I are invited to the table and afterwards the dishes are cleaned. Who does all this?” “My mum and two sisters,” replied the son. “Son, don’t you think we treat your mother and sisters unfairly in the way we share tasks in this home?” Slowly, the boy answered, “DAD, I do see clearly now that we treat them unfairly. But please, Dad, don’t tell them!”
This is the problem with some of us, we know the truth but we don’t want to admit it. They fear to lose certain privileges that they enjoy when they stay in the dark! Those who stand to gain from the ignorance of others will always fight to prolong such a situation. Accepting Jesus into our lives means having the courage to look at ourselves as we really are.
To learn from Jesus we must first admit our ignorance, to be healed we must first acknowledge our blindness, to be forgiven we must confess our sins. The I'm-OK-you're-OK mentality so prevalent today may in fact not be too far from the mentality of the Pharisees. The great archbishop Fulton J. Sheen said that in the past Catholics believed Our Lady was immaculately conceived but now we believe we are all immaculately conceived and, therefore, sinless. Another way of asking that question is “Are we blind to our sinfulness and our need of God’s mercy?”
There are two main teachings in today's gospel story. 1) Baptism. Just as the blind man went down into the waters of Siloam and came up whole, so also believers who are immersed into the waters of baptism come up spiritually whole, totally healed of the blindness with which we are born.
Secondly, it teaches what it takes to be a disciple of Jesus. It is, in fact, a story of how a blind man who used to sit and beg became a disciple who went about witnessing to Jesus. As in last week's story of the conversion of the Samaritan woman by Jacob's well, this story of the healing of the blind man shows that the one thing you need to qualify to bear witness to Jesus is not doing a certain kind of studies but having a certain kind of experience. The crisis of faith in our time is not very different from the crisis of faith of the Pharisees, namely, thinking that true piety means knowing and following the Book. But Christianity has a lot more to do with knowing and following the Person, the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Faith experience comes before theology. That is why the blind man arrived at the true faith in Jesus before the learned Pharisees. Let us today admit our spiritual blindness and pray with St Augustine of Hippo: "Lord that we may see." The Lord will give us light and spiritual insight.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
N:B:- Sorry for the short homily due to cardinal appeal's Commitment day.
My dear brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ,
In a certain home, a father once called for a meeting with his twelve-year-old son. Father wanted to talk about fairness in the home! “Son,” began the father, “when you look at the way responsibilities are shared in this home, don’t you think you and I are unfair to your mother and two sisters in that they do most of the work in the home?” When we wake up in the morning, the house is swept, breakfast prepared and afterwards all the dishes cleaned. And when you come home from school, you find lunch already prepared. After lunch the dishes are cleaned and preparations for supper begin. Water is fetched and so is firewood. Then supper is ready, you and I are invited to the table and afterwards the dishes are cleaned. Who does all this?” “My mum and two sisters,” replied the son. “Son, don’t you think we treat your mother and sisters unfairly in the way we share tasks in this home?” Slowly, the boy answered, “DAD, I do see clearly now that we treat them unfairly. But please, Dad, don’t tell them!”
This is the problem with some of us, we know the truth but we don’t want to admit it. They fear to lose certain privileges that they enjoy when they stay in the dark! Those who stand to gain from the ignorance of others will always fight to prolong such a situation. Accepting Jesus into our lives means having the courage to look at ourselves as we really are.
To learn from Jesus we must first admit our ignorance, to be healed we must first acknowledge our blindness, to be forgiven we must confess our sins. The I'm-OK-you're-OK mentality so prevalent today may in fact not be too far from the mentality of the Pharisees. The great archbishop Fulton J. Sheen said that in the past Catholics believed Our Lady was immaculately conceived but now we believe we are all immaculately conceived and, therefore, sinless. Another way of asking that question is “Are we blind to our sinfulness and our need of God’s mercy?”
There are two main teachings in today's gospel story. 1) Baptism. Just as the blind man went down into the waters of Siloam and came up whole, so also believers who are immersed into the waters of baptism come up spiritually whole, totally healed of the blindness with which we are born.
Secondly, it teaches what it takes to be a disciple of Jesus. It is, in fact, a story of how a blind man who used to sit and beg became a disciple who went about witnessing to Jesus. As in last week's story of the conversion of the Samaritan woman by Jacob's well, this story of the healing of the blind man shows that the one thing you need to qualify to bear witness to Jesus is not doing a certain kind of studies but having a certain kind of experience. The crisis of faith in our time is not very different from the crisis of faith of the Pharisees, namely, thinking that true piety means knowing and following the Book. But Christianity has a lot more to do with knowing and following the Person, the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Faith experience comes before theology. That is why the blind man arrived at the true faith in Jesus before the learned Pharisees. Let us today admit our spiritual blindness and pray with St Augustine of Hippo: "Lord that we may see." The Lord will give us light and spiritual insight.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
N:B:- Sorry for the short homily due to cardinal appeal's Commitment day.
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