Homily for Lent 4, Cycle A, 2nd Scrutiny

I preached a different homily at the Mass for the 2nd Scrutiny with the Elect (Catechumens), using the readings for Cycle A: John 9, the Man Blind from Birth.

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/033025-YearA.cfm

frjoedailey@gmail.com

Transcript

My mother is 98 years old. She doesn't look her age. Her mind is sharp and she's in pretty good health. But she has macular degeneration and it has become increasingly difficult for her to see. At first she was having trouble reading fine print, so I got her an iPad and that helped because she could make the type bigger. Now she still has peripheral vision, but she can't read on the iPad or her computer monitor. She's been having a hard time adjusting. 

Last week she had an appointment with her primary physician. I think he's been her doctor for more than 30 years. They see eye to eye. After listening to her story about her vision problems, her doctor said to her, "Jane, you are 98 years old." Now, my mom has been 98 years old since October, but I think her doctor helped her see herself in a new way. I think for the first time my mom saw herself as a 98 year old woman. Even with her limited vision, she saw herself as she really is. 

We don't only see with our eyes. In conversation we might say, "Oh, I see what you are saying." When our eyes and ears are connected, we understand in a deeper way from the heart. John the Evangelist uses seeing as a metaphor for believing, for coming to see past outward appearances to the truth deep in the heart of things. The disciples look at a man who is blind and see a sinner. Jesus sees something else. Creation is not finished, reaching down into the dust of the earth from which Adam was created. Jesus continues the Father's work. God is not resting. God is not taking the Sabbath off. God is working while it is still day. 

In the early church, the sacrament of baptism was called the sacrament of illumination. The healing of the man born blind is the story of how one is invited to become a disciple of Jesus and to follow him. The blind man was sent to wash in the pool of Siloam, which means sent. The water reminds us of baptism, which is itself a form of commissioning, of being sent. 

The word that the New Testament uses for one who is sent is "apostle." By the end of the story, we discover that what Jesus is doing through sign and symbol is calling and anointing the man as an apostle, not with precious oil, but with spittle, dirt, and municipal water. Jesus is recruiting a new disciple from the ranks of the excluded and disinherited, overturning the conventional hierarchies of the day. 

In his book "The Gift of Asher Lev," Chaim Potak writes, "My father said that the seeing of God is not like the seeing of humans. We only see between the blinks of our eyes. We do not know what the world is like during the blinks. We see the world in pieces, in fragments. But the Master of the universe sees the world whole, unbroken. That world is good." Jesus' work is to move people beyond pieces and fragments, counting and measuring, because our measuring is always too small. 

We are being trained to see in a new way. When Samuel was sent to anoint Jesse's son, he was sure he knew what the new king should look like, but he had gone through all the sons and still he hadn't found him. Who was missing? What was he not seeing? They look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. As the fox tells the little prince, "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye." 

Jacques Lusseyran, a French resistance fighter, went blind suddenly as a young boy. Barely ten days after his accident, Lusseyran made a discovery that changed his life. He wrote, "I had completely lost the sight of my eyes. I could not see the light of the world anymore. Yet the light was still there." Jacques learned to see in an entirely new way. The source of light is not in the outer world. The light dwells where life also dwells within ourselves. And no one could turn out the light inside him without his consent. 

Jesus said, "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." And Jesus promised to be with us always until the end of the age.