You’ll hear prayers for the dispelling of darkness in their lives, for the light of Christ and truth and faith to shine in their lives, and you’ll notice how the exorcism prayer references today’s Gospel reading about the healing of the man born blind.
All of us, emerging from our mother’s wombs, are like the man born blind, but we are born with a more terrible malady, original sin, the deprivation of the loss of God’s grace in our souls. And so we require the saving grace of baptism, to restore what was lost due to sin. And through baptism we are given the gift of faith which enables us to see as we should.
The great church father Origen said, “to be holy is to see with the eyes of Christ.” Blindness is used often in the New Testament to point out that we do not see as we should. We don’t see our neighbor as we should with eyes of loving compassion, we don’t see God as we should, we don’t see ourselves as we should, we don’t see Truth as we should. Sin has clouded our vision to rightly perceive truth, goodness, and beauty.
And so to be holy is to see with the eyes of Christ. The Saints are those who through a life seeking after holiness have begun to see clearly. They see evil and error and sin for what they really are, and rid them from their lives. They see the poor, as the beloved of God. They see the need to bless those who curse them, and to pray for those who mistreat them, like Christ. The see the cross as the royal road to heaven.
Jesus sees this man born blind. The blind man was probably begging at the gate, as many blind people were often forced to do. And Jesus sees him. Jesus sees all of us. The eye of God sees us always, as Padre Pio would say.
Then Jesus approaches this man, he spits on the ground, and makes a kind of paste, a sort of salve—salve, from which we get the word, salvation. St. Augustine says, his spittle represents his divinity, the earth, his humanity. Divinity taking on the flesh, the incarnation of Christ, is the salve God uses to heals our deepest wounds. Jesus rubbing the salve in this man’s eyes, well, that’s Christ himself being rubbed into our eyes. His incarnation, his presence among us is what allows us to see.
On Ash Wednesday, we put not earth and spittle on our eyes, but we did put ashes mixed with holy water on our foreheads. That was a salve of sorts. The salve of repentance. The reminder of the need to do penance for our sins, is a salve indeed, that helps baptized and unbaptized alike to take a hard look at our lives, to discern if any sinful attitudes, habits, or behaviors have begun to blind us to goodness of the moral life of Christ.
After placing the salve on the eyes of the blind man, Jesus tells him to then go wash in the pool, and he is then able to see. The pool is evocative of baptism.
For it is through baptism that we are grafted on to his body and become members of the Church. Isn’t it wonderful to know that when you come to Church, you are gathering with formerly spiritually blind people who are learning how to see again. We are all at different stages of regaining spiritual sight, some of us make better use of the time we’ve been given to regain our sight, some of us have a hard time taking our focus off of the world or off of ourselves. Many of us sadly, at some points in our lives reblind ourselves with the red-hot poker of mortal sin. But even mortal sin after our baptism can be healed in the Sacrament of Confession.
Today I am wearing the rose-colored vestments, because today, the Fourth Sunday of Lent, is "Laetare Sunday". Laetare means rejoice. We rejoice because we recognize the prayer, fasting, and almsgiving of Lent helps us see clearly, and helps us to prepare well for Easter which is the source of our spiritual rebirth. We will celebrate the Easter sacraments with our candidates for full initiation, and so we are barely able to contain our joy.
Again, if you haven’t made a good Lenten confession yet, there is still time.
We’re 4 weeks into Lent, and I’ve made the invitation to you all several times to go to confession, and many have gone. I was so delighted that Evening of Confession a week and a half ago. I heard about 30 confessions for almost 3 and a half hours, and I would have heard them for three and a half more if I needed to.
But, I can do math. And, there are still many souls in this parish, who haven’t been to confession in a while, too long. Jesus is waiting for you with the salve of his mercy and grace. Go to confession. Especially if you have unconfessed mortal sins. We don’t know the day nor the hour, and the greatest tragedy is when a soul fails to turn to God for forgiveness. There is more joy when one sinner repents than 99 who don’t. Don’t be a member of the 99% who fail to repent. Please. You’ll feel so much better. You’ll begin to see more clearly than you have, perhaps, in a long time.
May this Lenten season continue to bring about the healing of spiritual sight, a dispelling of darkness in all of us, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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