Fourth Sunday of Lent
This is a great week, and I am very blessed to be giving these reflections this week! I like to think it is “party week” in Lent. First, we have today, Laetare Sunday, our halfway point to Easter Sunday. We have St. Patrick, then every Italian’s favorite saint, Venerable Father St. Joseph, then finally to end the week, we have “the second Easter” as the seminarians like to call it, the Transitus or Passing of Our Holy Father St. Benedict.
Today, being Laetare Sunday, we hear in the gospel concerning the blind man, “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.’”
Jesus saying that night is approaching, makes me wonder if this miracle didn’t take place at noon or sometime in the evening because Jesus, being God, knows that he is the light and the light will be taken away. And what happens in two weeks at night? Jesus is betrayed and arrested in the garden, beaten up, spat upon, beard plucked, stripped of his garments, scourged at a pillar, crowned with thorns, carries a weight of a heavy cross, and dies—dies during a solar eclipse when the whole world goes dark.
We think that the light is extinguished, the candle broken, but just the opposite! The light goes to the netherworld, frees those held captive from Satan’s snare and brings the Saints of old into glory with him and frees us from our punishment! On Ash Wednesday we received ashes on our heads because we are dust of the earth, and to dust we shall return Jesus spits on the ground to form clay, probably the same clay that made our first parents Adam and Eve, and puts the clay on the blind mans eyes and sends him to the pool of Siloam, which as we read means sent. God sends him to be washed clean of his blindness and of his sins, the light of the world never wants us to live in the darkness of sin, because, like Jesus said to the pharisees, [“you are still blind and still living in the darkness, it is already dark for you there is no chance to see the light which leads to heaven for you!] for saying ‘we see’ so your sin remains.’” Be in the light!
Reflection by Br. Maximilian Burkhart, OSB
Posted in Articles for Lent, Daily Reflections