(Fourth Sunday of Lent-Year A; This homily was given on March 22, 2020 in Rome, Italy; See John 9: 1-41)
This has definitely been a period of learning. Here in Italy, and certainly everywhere else in the world, we have had to learn new ways of living with the crisis of COVID-19. In fact, even the seminarians here in Rome and students at the major universities are learning new ways of, well, learning. Instead of listening to lectures in a classroom, they are following their professors online behind a computer screen. The same is happening in grammar schools and high schools, here and in the U.S., and across the world.
Priests and religious are necessarily learning new ways of ministering in these challenging times. Although many priests have already become tech-savvy by putting their Masses and homilies online for the sick and homebound, now this is perhaps the only way for priests to communicate the saving message of Christ to their flock. Parishes everywhere in the world are becoming “homebound” as states and regions implement radical measures to stave off the spread of this devastating illness.
We are all learning to live in a new way, staying more and more at home and hopefully striving to understand what our Lord is asking of us in these strange days. That message of learning and growth is central to the Christian life. We also see it clearly in the readings for this weekend. St. Paul, writing to the Church at Ephesus, instructs them, “Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:10).
St. Paul’s audience has already experienced interior conversion and has been introduced into the life of Jesus Christ. He writes to them, saying “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8). Still, the fullness of the Christian life is not something that happens automatically. They will have to learn about the life, passion and death of Christ; they will come to discover the life of virtue and the need to live daily by God’s grace and mercy. They will gradually, and certainly joyfully, “learn what is pleasing to the Lord”.
Liturgically in the life of the Church, catechumens are learning many things about the Christian life. They are being instructed in the faith as they prepare to be received into the Church this Easter. Perhaps many of them will have to learn a different way of celebrating that mystery in these coming days. Maybe many of them will not be able to receive the Sacraments of Initiation in the presence of an entire congregation and their family as they had anticipated, but perhaps they will have to experience that moment at some time later. This is definitely a new period of learning for us all.
In the Gospel this weekend we hear of the man born blind who is healed by Christ. Once in utter darkness, now he is able to see the light and everyone in it. It is a glorious moment of healing and grace for that man. Still, he does not completely know everything that he needs to know, or would like to know, about living in the light. He does not know everything that he needs to know about life in Jesus Christ. He will come to discover these things gradually; he will learn them.
When the people come to discover that the blind man has been healed, they are astounded and ask him how he received his sight. He responds, “The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went.” (John 9:11). The man called Jesus . . . He is correct, of course. Jesus is a man. Still, there is so much more that he will come to know about this Jesus of Nazareth.
The next time the man born blind is questioned, the inquiry happens before the Pharisees. They ask him the same question, how he was healed. The man responds in the same way, but by now he has been able to learn a little more about “the man called Jesus.” When the Pharisees ask, “What do you have to say about him,” the man replies, “He is a prophet” (John 9:17). OK, now we are getting warmer! Again, what the man has said is true, Jesus is a prophet. He has come, in fact, to fulfill the law and the prophets. But there is still much more left to learn. It is only when the man comes back, face to face with Jesus, that the eyes of his heart are completely opened.
Jesus hears that the Pharisees have thrown the man out of the synagogue, and so our Lord seeks him out. The Gospel relates that exchange between the Master and His pupil:
[Jesus] found him and said,
“Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
He answered and said,
“Who is he sir, that I may believe in him?”
Jesus said to him,
“You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.”
He said,
“I do believe, Lord,” and he worshiped him.
—John 9:35-38
In the space of that account in the Gospel this man has not only received his sight, not only has he moved from darkness to light, but he has also come to a living faith in Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God. He places his belief in the Lord, and he worships Him.
How are we growing in our faith this Lent, and how are we able to respond to St. Paul’s exhortation, “Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:10)?
Firstly, it is hardly possible to please someone if you do not know them! It is also really difficult to know someone unless you talk with them. A lot. We started Lent focusing on prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Today we can check back on those three spiritual practices and especially our daily conversation with the Lord. We begin to please the Lord by sincere and heartfelt prayer. Are we speaking to Him often about the coronavirus? About the people that we love and are close to, and the concerns that they are facing? About the people that are very far away, people we perhaps do not even know, but who are desperately in need our prayers in this crisis? This is pleasing to God. So is listening well to Him, trying to understand what He is saying to us and how He would like us to live our Christian faith. We please the Lord by talking with Him a lot in prayer.
Secondly, we can learn what is pleasing to the Lord in the midst of the ordinary struggles and trials that we face each day. There is a remarkable passage in the Letter to the Hebrews describing the passion of our Lord. It says, “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (Hebrews 5:8-9). It is not the case that Jesus was ever disobedient, and had to be taught a lesson. Obviously, He was always obedient and He lovingly attended the will of the Father. It is just that, in those moments of suffering, He was able to manifest and express that obedience and love in a particular and efficacious way. So it is with each of us. In the moments of difficulty that we face each day, we learn obedience, we learn to lovingly attend to the will of God. These days it may seem very difficult to navigate the many changes in our lives, the restrictions we have received, the challenges that we are facing. There are many opportunities for us to learn the obedience of love that grace often ushers into our lives in precisely such moments.
Finally, we can learn what is pleasing to the Lord through what the theologian Robert Jenson indicates as "telling the story of salvation." According to Jenson, the role of the Christian is to tell the story of salvation, firstly to God, and then to the world around us.
At first this seems rather strange. Why would we tell the story of salvation to God? It would seem that He is already rather familiar with that story! But if we look all throughout the Sacred Scriptures, the people of God are constantly telling the story about how God saved them, how He rescued them from peril, and they praise Him for that marvelous salvation. It is called, says Jenson, worship. We worship God when we recall all the amazing things He has done for us, and give Him thanks and praise. In the Gospel, the man born blind finally came to understand who Jesus was. He expressed his faith in the Lord, “and he worshiped him.” We are called to do the same.
Once we have been strengthened in our faith and worshiped God, then we move on to tell the story of salvation to those around us. This is evangelization. In these difficult days in which so many people are worried and concerned about the future and about all that is happening around us, we do well as Christians to remember that God is faithful; that He has always been faithful; that He always will be faithful. When we tell the story of God’s saving love and His care for our lives, we give the people around us hope that we are not alone and that we will always be cared for by God, especially in dark and difficult times like the one we are experiencing.
As we strive “to learn what is pleasing to the Lord,” there are many things that God can teach us. By far, three of the greatest of these are faith, hope and love. May we discover, like the man in our Gospel this weekend, how to have a living faith that worships and obeys God. We also place our hope and our trust in Him and in the promise that He is always with us, especially as we face the crisis of the coronavirus. We ask, above all, for the grace to love Him, and to see that same love made present in our lives and in the way we live.
