Word to the Wise
Sunday, April 3, 2011 - 4th Sunday of Lent - A
[1 Sam 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a; Eph 5:8-14; John 9:1-41 or 9:1, 6-9, 13-17, 34-38]"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. Then Jesus said, '"I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind."
The master playwright of the Gospel of John once more presents us with a carefully constructed drama that brings us face to face with the Truth! Last Sunday, the drama of the encounter with the Samaritan Woman demonstrated the step by step growth in understanding on the part of the woman until she felt confident enough to proclaim what she understood to the village which then comes and understands on its own. Today, a similar dramatic process takes place in Jesus' encounter with a man blind from birth. Here there is a double development. The man born blind gradually comes to "see" Jesus. The religious authorities who claim to "see" become blind to the Truth.
In both encounters - Samaritan Woman and Man Born Blind - the superficial is put aside very early on. The issues of Jew vs. Samaritan or the cause of the blindness are left behind and the reader is brought into the dramatic process almost like those "thrillers" that we used to see serially at the movie theaters years ago. We want to shout a warning to the hero and hiss at the villains but the play must go on! We can ask ourselves, "Is the woman dense?" "What's taking the cured man so long to 'see?'" "Why are the religious authorities so 'blind?'"
It shouldn't surprise us that these dramatic gospel accounts are read year after year as part of the RCIA process by which non-Catholic persons become members of the church and are received at Easter. For many of them, the journey into understanding has been a long process of struggle and faith. We "cradle Catholics" may have a hard time understanding all that they have gone through to come to this point. The question we need to ask ourselves when we witness the faith of our new brothers and sisters in faith is how well do we cradle Catholics see and understand? Can we appreciate the stubborn confidence that the Samaritan Woman and the Man Born Blind now have because they have taken hold of the Truth that stood before them? Or do we take the Truth for granted and claim that our "cradle" status makes us superior and better able to "see?" Or can we have the humility to sing with them the well-known lines from the great hymn, AMAZING GRACE: "I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see!" AMEN
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