Fourth Sunday of Lent

Today's Mass Readings

“Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all who love her. Be joyful, all who were in mourning; exult and rejoice.” We have reached the halfway point in our Lenten journey, and we say rejoice, in Latin, Laetare. But what are we rejoicing in? Is it simply that we are halfway through our Lenten journey; we are almost done? No, we rejoice in something so beautiful that our souls must proclaim rejoice. Two reasons come to mind in reflecting on today’s liturgy, we look back to what we have been doing, and then we look forward to what is to come.

First, we look back over our Lenten journey and examine our fasting, our prayer, our charity, our struggles, and our joys, and we ask ourselves, what graces have we received, and how are they leading us into the Light of Christ? At times, our disciplines can feel like a burden, but what seems like a burden oftentimes is the very thing that reveals God’s love for us. The man born blind suffered his whole life with this great burden, but when his disciples asked Jesus if the man was blind because he sinned or his parents, he says, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.” Through our disciplines, God comes to us because, like the blind man, we turn and focus on Christ. By turning to him, we will be healed of our spiritual blindness and will come into the light that reveals all things.

These graces then help us to look forward to the grace that is to come; the Paschal mystery we are preparing for, when the light of Christ is revealed to us and we are lifted out of the Darkness of our sinful lives and are brought into the Light of Christ, as St. Paul says, “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as Children of the light, for light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth.” We embrace the grace revealed to us in the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ so that our lives may be transformed into the light which produces all things that are good. So that we have the strength to turn away from the things of Darkness and become truly Children of Light.

So we say, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

Reflection by Br. Placid Dale, OSB