4th Sunday of Lent

Fr. George Smiga, a priest who ministers in the diocese of Cleaveland, Ohio tells a story about an interesting conversation he once had with his mother. His mother was not a highly educated woman, at least not in the academic sense. She was raised as a child on a farm in Poland, and her life was seriously disrupted by the Second World War. Through all of those challenges of life, her faith was her foundation. But there was one period in the 1970’s when her faith was substantially shaken. It was during the period in which the reforms of the Second Vatican Council were being implemented. His mother always saw her faith as a rock foundation, as an immovable and unchangeable truth. But it seemed to her, during the implementation of the Second Vatican Council, that everything was changing, everything was up for grabs. So, since her son was in the seminary preparing to be a priest, she said to him, “George, we need to talk.” As they sat down to talk, she began. “Now,” she said, “you mean to tell me that from now on we can eat meat on Fridays?” “Yes,” George said, “Mom, except for the Fridays of Lent, you can eat meat.” “But I don’t understand,” she said. “When I was growing up, the priest told us from the pulpit that, if you ate meat on Friday, even a single sausage, you would go straight to hell.” “He might have said that, Mom, but no meat on Fridays is directive of the church, and it is one which has now been changed.” She shook her head.

“And you mean to tell me now that we can receive the bread of the Eucharist in our hands?” “Yes, Mom, you can do that now.” “I don’t understand,” she said. “The priest would tell us that we were never able to touch the Eucharist. When he placed it in our mouth, we had to be careful lest it touch our teeth. If it did, we would go straight to hell.” “Well, he might have said that, Mom, but receiving in your hand was the original practice, and it’s the one that we are returning to now.” Again she shook her head.

Fr. George could tell that these changes were hard on his mother. But since this was such a rare discussion, Fr. George thought he might bring up some of the other changes that the Vatican Council was implementing. He knew that Poland had a rather sad tradition of anti-Semitism, so he said, “You know, Mom, one of the other things that was clarified at the Second Vatican Council is that we as Catholics no longer believe that the Jewish people are cut off from God. We don’t believe that they are going to hell.” Mrs Smiga looked at her son and she said, “I never believed that!” This surprised George, so he replied “Didn’t the priest tell you as you were growing up that the Jews were going to hell?” “All the time,” she said, “at least once a month. But I didn’t believe it.” Now Fr. George was confused. He said, “Look, you listened to the priest when he said you couldn’t eat meat on Friday. You listened to the priest when he said you couldn’t touch the host. Why didn’t you listen to the priest when he said that the Jews were going to hell?” She thought for a moment. “Well,” she said, “we lived with them. They were our neighbours. I remember once when my mother, your grandmother, was very sick. We thought she was going to die. The Jewish woman down the street visited one day and brought a pot of chicken soup. She said to your grandmother, ‘Mrs. Buczkowski, this recipe for chicken soup has been in my family for generations. I tell you, if you take some twice a day, you will recover.’ So your grandmother did that, and within two weeks she was back again working out in the fields. From that time forward, whenever your grandmother ran into that Jewish woman, she would say to her friends, ‘Look, here’s the woman who saved my life.’ That’s, George, why I never believed that the Jews were going to hell—because of the chicken soup.”

In today’s gospel we meet a man who is born blind and is cured by Jesus of his blindness. The man is delighted to have his sight back and he tells everyone that he has been healed by a prophet. However, because this healing took place on the sabbath, the Pharisees give the man a hard time and tell him that Jesus cannot be a prophet because he has contravened the commandments by working on the sabbath. But the man born blind knows that Jesus is a good person, and nothing other people can say will shake his faith in Jesus. The story of Mrs. Smiga illustrates this point well – we trust our personal experience – despite being told by the priest that Jews were going to hell, Mrs. Smiga never believed this because she had experienced the goodness of her Jewish neighbour and knew that God could never send such a kind person off to eternal damnation.

Today’s gospel can be divided into three parts:

1. The first part is the healing and centres around Jesus. Jesus proclaims that as long as he is in the world he is the light of the world.

2. Then Jesus disappears from the scene, he goes off the stage and symbolically, the light leaves the stage and chaos ensues – arguments between this man, the Pharisees, the crowds. Some people are trying to head towards the light, while others are heading away from the light, but they are all stabbing in the dark.

3. Then Jesus returns to the scene, and in the light of his presence, the man born blind is now given the eyes of faith to see in Jesus the salvation he searches for.

In many ways this gospel represents a microcosm of our own lives. We can all point to times in our lives when we can say that we lived with conviction, felt really close to God and were sure walking in the light of Christ. There are these moments of deep grace that we are given to live. Then there are other times when we seem to be without light. We walk with much less conviction, when God seems to have disappeared, where Jesus seems to have exited the stage of our life. Fear is the natural human response to vulnerability. St. Ignatius advises us that in a time of seeming darkness we must try to remember the times when we experienced the light of God and console ourselves with the knowledge that the light will soon return.

The parents of this man born blind represent how not to react in a time of darkness. They let themselves be ruled by fear. Crucially, they do not actually meet Jesus and do not seek to meet Jesus. The parents represent how fear can come to rule our lives and lead us to make bad decisions. The parents of this man do not want to get involved in a fight that they feel will get them into trouble with the religious authorities. So they become paralysed and let fear rule their lives. I wonder if the parents of this man born blind ever lived to regret this moment that they let fear paralyse them. I wonder if they lived to see the vibrancy of the early church in the wake of Jesus’ resurrection and if they lived to regret passing up the opportunity to stand up for Jesus and rejoice at their son’s healing. When we make a decision inspired by fear, we normally live to regret it.

The man born blind symbolizes how we are to react in a time of darkness, when Jesus seems to have gone off-stage. We are to remain faithful and cling to our last experience of God’s goodness and kindness to us. St. Ignatius tells us that we should not make any changes in a time of darkness, especially not make any decisions. This is why the man born blind is right to stick to his guns, even though it means arguing with people who are far more educated and theologically formed than he is. He will not budge from his firm conviction that in Jesus he has met the salvation of God. It is because of his faithfulness in a time of darkness that the light returns and he is revisited by Jesus, who then helps him to come to a more complete faith and recognize him as the Lord.

Many of us will find ourselves quite profoundly shaken at how commonplace war has become in our contemporary world. When Russia invaded Ukraine four years ago, it seemed like a massive affront to the notion that we lived in a world that we moving towards greater integration and world peace. The current war in the Middle East has plunged our world into further chaos and division and sown much confusion and uncertainty. Amidst this uncertainty, we need to have something solid to hold onto, some basic goodness that can still give us hope. The gospel today comes as a helpful reminder of holding onto central truths of our experience of God’s goodness in the time of chaos and uncertainty. When everything else seems “up for grabs” as Mrs. Smiga felt that it was – it was necessary for her to hold onto her experience of the basic goodness of her neighbour. When many of the values that seemed so inviolable in our lives are now seen to be in flux, it is important that we hold onto the light that Jesus provides to us through experiences of God’s goodness.

In such times, this hymn from John Henry Newman is apposite:

Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,

Lead Thou me on;

The night is dark, and I am far from home,

Lead Thou me on.

Keep Thou my feet;

I do not ask to see the distant scene;

one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that

Thou shouldst lead me on;

I loved to choose and see my path; but now

Lead Thou me on.

I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, pride ruled my will; Remember not past years.

So long Thy power hath blessed me, sure it still

Will lead me on.

O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till

The night is gone;

And with the morn those angel faces smile,

Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

Questions for reflection

1. At a time when “everything seems up for grabs” do I allow myself to fall into moral relativism?

2. What is my default reaction when I am asked to walk through a time of darkness? Do I give into fear easily?

3. What are the central events of God’s goodness in my life that I need to cling to as my guiding light?