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Fourth Sunday of Lent
But those are my questions. They are not the concerns of the gospel writer. Remember, we are in John’s gospel, the gospel of signs and symbols. That should tip us off to the fact that we are dealing here with a physical miracle, yes, but far more than a physical miracle. In John’s gospel we always have to dig deeper, we have to get below and beyond the mere appearances of things. In John’s gospel, if you’ll pardon the pun, there is always more than meets the eye. And what is that “more” in this story? It’s a kind of seeing that is deeper by far than physical sight. This story is not so much about the glorious things we see with these eyes as it is about the far more glorious things that we see with the eyes of faith. It’s about a man getting his eyes opened, all right, but the really important eyes that get opened are the eyes of faith. That’s why the Church gives us this story every year during Lent. Lent is the Church’s prime time for growing in faith. Lent is meant to be eye-opening time for the Church, and especially for those who are preparing for baptism at Easter. What better time, then, to hear this story? What better time to reflect on faith and on what it means to us, and where it can take us? What better time to come to terms with what a great gift faith is and, at the same time, to acknowledge how weak and fragile and elusive our faith can sometimes be? I often find myself wondering how people without faith make it in life. Some of them, I know, would really like to believe. Some of them have even been coming to church for years but have never been able to make the leap of faith. And I wonder why. Why do I have faith and they don’t? I honestly don’t know. All I know is that faith is a gift, and gifts are almost always mysterious and never deserved. And even those of us who have been blessed with faith have to struggle with it at times, don’t we? One of my favorite prayers from the gospels is this very simple one that a father made to Jesus when he desperately wanted him to cure his son: “I believe, Lord,” he said, “help my unbelief!” Do you relate to that? I think we all do. I remember well a conversation I had years ago with Ulrich Henn, the sculptor who created our bronze doors and our tabernacle in the Blessed Sacrament chapel. He was talking with me about the door handle he was making for the right-hand flanking door out there, and he told me he was going to represent the story in the gospel when Peter tried to walk on the water toward Jesus and began to sink. When I asked him why, he told me, “people who come here may believe but not always very well, and they need to know that Jesus will be here to pull them out of the waters of disbelief just like he did Peter.” “I believe, Lord, help my unbelief!” Today’s gospel makes it clear that faith is more a process than a possession. Faith is not a neatly packaged set of beliefs (a kind of handy portable catechism with carefully crafted answers to every possible question); faith is a way of living and a way of looking at all of life. And it’s a growing thing, a process. Notice how as today’s gospel unfolds, the blind man comes to faith only in stages. Only gradually does he come to recognize who Jesus is, only gradually does he come to actually believe in him. This is very clear from the language of the narrative. When the authorities first question him about how he got his sight back, he refers to his healer as “the man called Jesus” (there’s a certain distance in that language, isn’t there? a certain detachment); later, in answering the authorities, he refers to Jesus as “a prophet” (and there are stirrings of faith there, for sure); later still, he speaks of Jesus as “a man from God” (and that’s getting closer); then Jesus is “the Son of Man” (and that’s a highly charged biblical title with divine overtones); and finally, in an act of profound faith he calls Jesus “Lord,” and he worships him. My friends, the blind man’s path to faith should give hope to all of us who are on a similar path, all of us who believe, but not very well, all of us who need help with our “unbelief.” And we should draw even more hope from the message of today’s reading from the Book of Samuel where we are reminded that all this is not just about what we see but about what God sees. God sees in ways we humans don’t, and never will. The God who saw promise in the under-age young shepherd boy, David, sees promise in us, too, no matter how unpromising we may feel. That’s because God doesn’t see things the way we do. We see “the appearances only” and God “looks into the heart.” My friends, to have faith – even to begin to have faith – is to have our eyes opened. And it’s even more: it is to start looking at things with God’s eyes. And when we do that, there’s absolutely no limit to what we’ll be able to see. Father Michael G. Ryan |
There are several stories in the gospels that tell of Jesus restoring sight to a
blind man, but today’s story is altogether different. This is not a story about
Jesus restoring sight to a blind man. It’s a story about giving sight to a man
who never saw in the first place, who was blind from birth. Can you imagine what
it was like for him when he first opened his eyes? It had to have been
overpowering but, at the same time, incredibly confusing because he would have
had absolutely no point of reference. Light and color would have been
entirely new for him. He had no idea what people looked like, or trees, or
water, or flowers, or the sky. In a flash, he was surrounded by an near-infinity
of newness. But none of this figures at all in today’s gospel story. The man who
receives his sight from Jesus is almost matter-of-fact in telling what happened
to him: “He smeared mud on my eyes, I washed it off, and now I can see.”
And I find myself wanting to ask, “See what? Weren’t you amazed, blown
away? Wasn’t it all beyond incredible?”