Fourth Sunday of Lent

Dominica IV in Quadragesima A
19 March 2023

 Again, at this point late in Lent, the Gospel readings put particularly intense focus on basic themes of desire for God, purification, increasing faith, and illumination; themes that are relevant, especially for those in RCIA who are in their final preparation for the climactic moments of their reception of the sacraments at the Easter Vigil.  Again, I want to encourage everyone to make it a point to commit to participating in the special ceremonies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday night.  It is always moving for everyone who attends and it will be a great way to pray for the Elect, our brothers and sisters in our RCIA program.

Today’s Gospel passage of the man born blind comes from chapter 9 of St. John’s Gospel.  To grasp a theme, however I also want to go back to John 8 and pass through both chapters to paint a picture.  In this section of St. John, Jesus has arrived in Jerusalem for the 8-day long Festival of Tabernacles, also called Booths.  It was an annual festival held in the autumn after the completion of the harvest season and marked by pilgrimage, people making a great migration to join together in prayer and celebration.  The festival celebrated God’s fidelity in providing for His people in the present harvest and the historical remembrance of His providing for them in the wilderness after the exodus.  Given that people were gathering in large numbers in limited space, they had to build tents or booths for lodging for the festival.  Those booths also served to be an image and reminder of the desert wanderings of their ancestors.  Jesus arrives in Jerusalem for this festival.  It is a chaotic scene due to all the people crammed in for the observance.  But it also becomes chaotic, in a different sense, because of the confrontations and hostility Jesus faces there about his identity.

Appearing throughout John 8 and into today’s selection from John 9 we see some prominent themes that are reminiscent of the Book of Genesis, the creation, the fall, and God’s plan for salvation.  To make a quick pass through John 8, we find chaos and the disorder of hostility against Jesus in the holy city.  Most especially is the chaos of hostility evident in the scribes and Pharisees who are opposing the Lord.  This chaos reminds us of what preceded God’s creation in Genesis when the earth was formless and void (cf. Gen. 1:1-2).  As His first act to bring order out of chaos, God said in Genesis, “Let there be light” (cf. Gen. 1:3), the first day of creation.  The Lord Jesus reveals himself in John 8 to be the light of the world (cf. Jn. 8:12).  In Genesis, after the Original Sin that deforms our human nature, leaving it fallen and inclined to sin, Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, stand alone among creation and they hide themselves from the sound of God’s arrival (cf. Gen. 3:7-8).  In John 8, after no one is without sin to cast the first stone at the woman caught in adultery, it says that the woman was left alone standing before Jesus (cf. Jn. 8:9), which seems to replay the dilemma of the first man and woman in the Garden, with Jesus now as the New Adam.  At the end of John 8 as the hostility and disorder becomes most intense, it says that Jesus hid himself and then left the Temple area.  That can be viewed as the Lord recapitulating these significant moments of God’s creation, the harm done by man’s sin, and His – God’s – choosing to place Himself into this same history in order to redeem it.

With all these images and echoes of Genesis with chaos, the creation, the fall, and the consequences of sin, we come to John 9, today’s selection.  Here we have the man born blind.  In other words, there is no light for him.  He is in darkness, and in darkness from the beginning.  In other words, this is not one who formerly could see and then became blind, but he has been in darkness from the beginning.  That’s a hint of Genesis.  I’m not making a scientifically precise observation, so don’t get hung up on the beginning point of life – as we know now – being conception as opposed to birth.  Simply acknowledge that to be blind from birth is a reference for this purpose that means the man has been in darkness from the beginning.  This can reinforce the theme of what has happened to mankind since the Fall, since what is narrated to us in that book of the beginnings called Genesis.  The man blind from birth serves as an image of mankind’s fallen nature that blinds us to God, to holiness, and to spiritual realities.  Why is the man blind from birth?  The prominent religious idea of the time is that it is due to someone’s sin, that it is punishment for sin.  Again, sin brings disorder and chaos and lack of light, lack of vision.  Just as Genesis tells us that God formed man from the dust of the earth after a mist had watered the ground and then man became a living being (cf. Gen. 2:6-7), what does Jesus do to heal the blind man and restore him?  To maintain this theme of the interplay of creation and Genesis, the Lord makes clay of the earth using the moisture of his saliva and refashions the man’s sight and then tells him to wash in the pool.

In Lent, those in RCIA preparing for baptism are being made ready to enter more deeply into the order of God, being refashioned – recreated – by being washed and having the blindness of sin removed so that they see and are enlightened.  Those of us already baptized have been washed; yet, we know our dullness, our laziness, our slowness of heart to believe – to see!  And with this torpor in mind we have to keep battling against our fallen nature and experience ongoing conversion and re-formation, a re-creation by God’s generous grace.  Lent is a time for us, the baptized, also.  It is a time to confront the ungodly chaos in our lives, which is sin.  It is a time to acknowledge our blindness, and to be washed in confession, which restores us to baptismal grace.  Our focus in this rich selection of God’s Word is not so much physical sight, but the connotation of sight that refers to faith and to belief.  Our sight is healed, purified, and made whole when we see the world as it truly is, when we see ourselves as we truly are, that is… when we see our need for God, when we admit the defect – the blindness – of our sin and seek to be healed so that we can truly see and live.  Like the man born blind, upon being healed in both physical and spiritual sight, may we say with him, “I do believe, Lord,” and, may we do as he did, “and he worshiped him” (Jn. 9:38).

Third Sunday of Lent

Dominica III in Quadragesima A
12 March 2023

 Lent is a time for disciples to be renewed in the new life that was begun in us at baptism and to strive to deepen that life and commitment to the Lord.  Lent is also the time of final preparation for those who will be baptized at the Easter Vigil or, if already baptized, received in to the Church.  We have reached the point of Lent where some very long Gospel selections place a particular focus on the new life won for us by the Lord and the effects of that life in the baptized.

God’s People Israel were His chosen people.  They were a holy people and a consecrated nation whose vocation was to advance in the world as a sign to other peoples of what is means to belong to God.  But being chosen did not mean that the Israelites had it easy.  Great hardship came their way.  Hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt.  The harsh passage through the desert in the Exodus.  Exile, captivity, and dispersion among other races and nations are just a few highlights we know from the Scriptures.  The opening lines in today’s first reading tell us the difficulties and setbacks and challenges of belonging to God as a unique people, which difficulties caused the Israelites to harden their hearts against God.  In the desert their physical thirst was not satisfied and, in another sense, that “thirst” that was their desire for fulfillment was also not satisfied.  In their weakness the people sought to fulfill themselves in ways that ultimately never fulfill, by positioning themselves against God in grumbling and doubt.  God heard their cries and provided water from the rock.  The place of their doubt and quarreling (Massah and Meribah) about whether God was in their midst became a symbol to the people that they should not let hardship cause them to seek to satiate their thirst apart from God.

Our thirst and God’s thirst for us is central to the Gospel of the Samaritan woman at the well.  We have natural thirst that needs to be quenched.  But “thirst” is also a symbol of desire for better life, desire for fulfillment, hopes and aspirations.  It is clear in the passage that these different senses of “thirst” are in play in the Gospel because it becomes clear that the woman and Jesus are speaking of different kinds of water.  She speaks of literal water from the well; Jesus speaks of living water that wells up to eternal life.

In this meeting place of the woman’s thirst for water and Jesus’ thirst for souls, his love for souls, we find a hidden message.  God sees and knows our struggles and hardships (like the people in the desert) and so, he weds Himself to us to bring us relief, fulfillment, and new life.  A major part of why I am captivated by this passage is because of the hidden nuptial imagery in it.  In the Scriptures to have a man and a woman meeting at a well has implications of betrothal and marriage further down the line.  Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at a well, and not just any generic well, but Jacob’s well.  The Jewish mind would know of wells in the Old Testament that were important meeting points.  Abraham’s servant meets Isaac’s future bride Rebecca at a well (cf. Gn. 24:10-53).  Moses meets Zipporah at a well before they marry (cf. Ex. 2:15-21).  Most especially for this Gospel, Jacob meets his beloved Rachel at a well, in fact the same well as the Gospel (cf. Gen. 29:1-14).  They marry and become the patriarch and matriarch of Israel.

Now, certainly the nuptial imagery of Jesus at the well is not to be understood in the sense of a literal future wedding, for we know that Jesus was celibate.  But the nuptial relationship and imagery remains.  Jesus is the Bridegroom of his Church, the Scriptures tell us.  Isaiah had prophesied to Israel that your maker will be your husband (cf. Is. 54:5) and your builder shall marry you (cf. Is. 62:5).  And Isaiah prophesied that Israel would be called no longer desolate but “espoused” (cf. Is. 62:4).  To see the Lord at Jacob’s well with the Samaritan woman sets the scene for us to understand that the Lord has a great love for his people – his scattered people – imaged in this woman from Samaria, and that he loves them and desires them more than they – more than we – even know.  Like the Samaritan woman we can seek to satisfy our lesser thirsts while being unaware of the One in our midst who offers us living water.  If only we would ask!

And there is the key for us!  Hardships and struggles and setbacks and sufferings plague us too.  In both direct and indirect ways we can grumble and complain against God.  In fact, I’m not even so much concerned about the direct doubts and grumblings against God.  At least a person who does so is honest and acknowledges the doubt stirring inside.  But the indirect and tacit doubt and grumbling ignores our deeper thirst and seeks to satisfy it in so many ways that will never last.  Don’t dismiss the possibility that we are like the people in the desert who doubt if God is with us.  No, ours may not be a direct statement of doubt.  But do you foster a meaningful and daily prayer life?  If not, that’s a silent Meribah and Massah.  But the Lord is already at the well waiting for you.  Do you seek to satisfy your longings, your thirst by your own means and in ways apart from God that will never satisfy?  That’s tacit grumbling.  And the Lord already knows your sins and calls you to repent, just like he knew the life of the Samaritan woman, leading her to repent and say “Come see a man who told me everything I have done.”

Over the course of her conversation with Jesus the Samaritan woman was illuminated to recognize Jesus and to come to faith in him.  We thirst for God.  We must be careful not to let hardship and struggle drive us to seek to satisfy our thirst in grumblings and doubt.  For they will never satisfy.  Rather, in prayer we arrive at the well and find the one who thirsts for us first.  As the water came from the rock in the desert, so we learn from St. Paul that Jesus is the Rock (cf. 1 Cor. 10:4).  He is struck on the Cross from which he cries: “I thirst.”  Give him a drink of your faith and seek from him the living water welling up to eternal life!

Second Sunday of Lent

Dominica II in Quadragesima A
5 March 2023

The first Sunday of Lent we began with a typical focus on the Devil’s temptation of Jesus in the desert, together with the Old Testament reading from Genesis of the fall of Adam and Eve by sin.  The second Sunday of Lent places our focus on the Transfiguration of the Lord on the mountain.  But we miss the very beginning snippet of today’s Gospel passage in Matthew chapter 17.  That missing introductory snippet reads: “And after six days, Jesus took Peter, James, and John…” and on with the rest of today’s selection.  I am choosing to alert you to that simple missing phrase, “and after six days”, because it sets the stage for understanding the Transfiguration as a parallel and fulfillment of an event in the Old Testament.

What is the point in highlighting the timing of “after six days”?  That timing gives us a connection, a parallel to the Old Testament accounts of Moses on Mt. Sinai.  With this in mind we can see a number of parallels between Moses on Mt. Sinai and Jesus on the mountain of the transfiguration.  In fact, I think it is worth hearing directly from the Old Testament to appreciate some similarities.  The Book of Exodus, chapter 24, verse 16b-18, says: “and on the seventh day [the Lord] called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud.  Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.  And Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain.  And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.”

Notice some parallels here: “After six days,” puts you at the seventh day.  On the seventh day Moses went up to be with the Lord God.  After six days, Jesus goes up the mountain where His presence as God is revealed.  The cloud on Mt. Sinai revealed the glory of the Lord.  In the Gospel we have the transfiguration of the Lord by which his glory was shone, his face shining like the sun, and his clothing becoming white as light.  In the Old Testament a cloud is a symbol of the presence of the glory of God and comes to be an image of the Holy Spirit.  In the Gospel we have a “bright cloud” from which the Father’s voice is heard.  When you put it all together, we have a key revelation of the Blessed Trinity in this event of the Transfiguration.  The Father, the Incarnate Son, and the Holy Spirit are all present here along with the Old Testament figures of Moses and Elijah.

Appreciating this parallel helps us see that Jesus is the new Moses.  He fulfills the mission of Moses and he is greater than Moses.  And that, in turn, communicates to us some significant meaning about what the Lord is coming to do and what he means for us.

With our Blessed Lord as the new Moses, and aware of the significance of Moses in salvation history, we can ask: What then is the exodus through which Jesus is leading us?  Our Lenten Sunday Masses are highlighting some aspects of this journey.  Last weekend we confronted temptation and sin and we saw its effects and destruction in the lives of Adam and Eve, our first parents.  They – and through them the human nature we inherit – were disfigured by sin.  Their eyes were opened and the impact of sin was seen in their relationship with one another and with God.  They began to fail to trust one another such that they began hiding themselves from one another and hiding themselves from God.  We inherit that disfigurement through Original Sin and we further harm our own nature, our very selves and our hope for eternal life, by our personal sins.  By listening to the “voice” of temptation we fall further under the dominance of the evil one and we harm our likeness to God, which is our fundamental dignity.  That’s the bad news.  It’s important to have that fundamental understanding of the reality of things.  The bad news explains much about ourselves and our world.  That’s perhaps why we face that sober truth so early in Lent as we did last Sunday.  But this weekend our Lenten journey places before us a new hope.  Just as God’s people were led out of slavery in Egypt by Moses, the new Moses – Jesus – is shown in the Gospel, and the exodus he leads us through is not liberation from a geographical place like Egypt, but liberation from the moral slavery to sin and the “place” of damnation.  The Transfiguration of God in our human flesh, affords us the Good News and the hope of our human nature being transformed where it has been disfigured by sin.  Our Lord has accomplished salvation for us.  Lent is our annual opportunity to be renewed in that pattern and to live more deeply the redemption the Lord won for us.  But there is an important key to keep in mind: We are never permitted to dismiss suffering and the Cross as part of this journey our Lord made as the New Moses.  We are never permitted to dismiss suffering and the cross as part of our own journey in following the Lord on our exodus to newness of life.  In the Gospel selection, the Lord required that they come down the mountain and continue on to Jerusalem, the place of his exodus from this life.  The Lord instructed Peter, James, and John, not to share the vision until after he had been raised from the dead.  In other words, the Lord accepts his suffering and death.  Just so, we cannot avoid the valleys of this life.  We cannot avoid suffering and our own crosses.  We cannot avoid going to our own Jerusalems for our own exodus.  Our sins are real and do real harm.  The Lord saves us from the eternal consequences of sin.  Yet, the disfiguring reality of sin requires our own transfiguration through struggle and sacrifice and much grace from God.  In all this we seek to cooperate with the Lord and his mission and to willingly go where he is leading.  In Lent we are called to leave our places of comfort, the places where we have set up our “tents”, to use an image from the Gospel.  We are called to go where we do not always want to go.  We take up penances and mortifications so that we are transformed by participating in the Cross.  We come here, where we seek to be worthily prepared, so that we can be nourished by the very sacrifice of the Lord on the Cross and so grow in his glory and know ourselves to be sons and daughters of our heavenly Father.