Sunday Meditation: The Anointing of the Eyes

Are the readings longer during Lent?  Today, Year A of the Fourth Sunday in Lent, must be the longest reading of the entire three-year lectionary.  Today we read the entire ninth chapter of John’s Gospel.  But it is a fantastic read, one that could classify as a short story.  Jesus comes across a man who is blind from birth and cures him.  But the story only starts there.  The city folk and especially the Pharisees who witness the miracle then try to figure out how and why the man was cured, and who the miracle worker was.  I’ll let the homilists I selected below explain most of it to you.  But I did want to focus on a particular word the blind man uses when asked to explain how he got his vision.  He says, “The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’”  He says his eyes were “anointed.”  I had puzzled over what the connections were between the first reading, the selection of David for king, and this reading.  Then I realized both the boy and the blind man were anointed.

 

Here is today’s Gospel reading.

 

 

As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth.

His disciples asked him,

“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents,

that he was born blind?”

Jesus answered,

“Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.

We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day.

Night is coming when no one can work.

While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

When he had said this, he spat on the ground

and made clay with the saliva,

and smeared the clay on his eyes,

and said to him,

“Go wash in the Pool of Siloam” —which means Sent—.

So he went and washed, and came back able to see.

 

His neighbors and those who had seen him earlier as a beggar said,

“Isn’t this the one who used to sit and beg?”

Some said, “It is, “

but others said, “No, he just looks like him.”

He said, “I am.”

So they said to him, “How were your eyes opened?”

He replied,

“The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes

and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’

So I went there and washed and was able to see.”

And they said to him, “Where is he?”

He said, “I don’t know.”

 

They brought the one who was once blind to the Pharisees.

Now Jesus had made clay and opened his eyes on a sabbath.

So then the Pharisees also asked him how he was able to see.

He said to them,

“He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see.”

So some of the Pharisees said,

“This man is not from God,

because he does not keep the sabbath.”

But others said,

“How can a sinful man do such signs?”

And there was a division among them.

So they said to the blind man again,

“What do you have to say about him,

since he opened your eyes?”

He said, “He is a prophet.”

 

Now the Jews did not believe

that he had been blind and gained his sight

until they summoned the parents of the one who had gained his sight.

They asked them,

“Is this your son, who you say was born blind?

How does he now see?”

His parents answered and said,

“We know that this is our son and that he was born blind.

We do not know how he sees now,

nor do we know who opened his eyes.

Ask him, he is of age;

he can speak for himself.”

His parents said this because they were afraid

of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed

that if anyone acknowledged him as the Christ,

he would be expelled from the synagogue.

For this reason his parents said,

“He is of age; question him.”

 

So a second time they called the man who had been blind

and said to him, “Give God the praise!

We know that this man is a sinner.”

He replied,

“If he is a sinner, I do not know.

One thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see.”

So they said to him,

“What did he do to you?

How did he open your eyes?”

He answered them,

“I told you already and you did not listen.

Why do you want to hear it again?

Do you want to become his disciples, too?”

They ridiculed him and said,

“You are that man’s disciple;

we are disciples of Moses!

We know that God spoke to Moses,

but we do not know where this one is from.”

The man answered and said to them,

“This is what is so amazing,

that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes.

We know that God does not listen to sinners,

but if one is devout and does his will, he listens to him.

It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind.

If this man were not from God,

he would not be able to do anything.”

They answered and said to him,

“You were born totally in sin,

and are you trying to teach us?”

Then they threw him out.

 

When Jesus heard that they had thrown him out,

he 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,

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.”

 

Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this

and said to him, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?”

Jesus said to them,

“If you were blind, you would have no sin;

but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.

~Jn:9:1-41

 

I was absolutely glued to Bishop Robert Barron’s homily on this passage this Sunday.

 

Bishop Barron:

Right at the beginning, it says Jesus passed by. He saw a man blind from birth. So his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?" Listen now to the answer of Jesus. Neither he nor his parents sinned. It is so that the works of God might be made visible through him. Let me just say something brief about this.  I think it's so important. Not many days ago, I was watching a replay of the movie Jackie, which is about Jackie Kennedy in the wake of the assassination of her husband. And it's a good kind of heart aching movie, but she's in dialogue in the course of movie with an elderly priest played by the great John Hurt, the English actor.  And she's suffering, of course. Why did this happen? How could God have possibly allowed this horrible thing to happen to my husband, to me, to our family? And the parole priest says, "Let me let me share a parable with you." And he tells this story and he gives that answer of Jesus. It's not because of his sin or anyone's sin.  It's that the works of God might be made visible through him. You know, we all suffer [to] different degrees. I get it.  But we all suffer and we're always looking for the answer. Why? Why? Why?  Why is God allowing this? Let this answer, everybody, sink in. Let it sink in. That when you're going through some terrible suffering, that the works of God might be made visible in you.  Somehow God is using this struggle, this difficulty, this pain for his purposes.

 

Oh that is profound.  God allows tragedy for us to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth.  There is so much more that Bishop Barron brings out of this passage: the dirt and spittle as elements for the sacraments, the dual nature of the incarnation, and the salve as the healing mixture for salvation.  “We are healed by our contact with Him.”  What a great homily.

 

For the pastoral homily, I present the homily from another bishop, Bishop John E. Keehner of Sioux City, Iowa.

 

Bishop Keehner:

But isn't there a bit of blindness in each of us which prevents us from seeing our own faults? Preventing us from understanding our own place in the world and our relationships with others? Don't we all have a blind spot which periodically gets us into trouble when we fail to notice those things we so easily take for granted? Don't we all occasionally fail to see the truth of our prejudice which prevent us from seeing in those around us the image and the likeness of God? Don't we all occasionally fail to see the truth of our relationships, even our relationship with God, so that we assume that there will always be the time we need to do whatever it is we need and want to do in life. There will always be another day for us to mend a broken relationship or to heal the wounds we have inflicted on others because of our selfishness. The season of Lent is passing quickly away.  Have we taken time this season to examine our hearts so that we might recognize that we are in fact blind?

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.  Routinely I am proven to have been blind to some issue or some insight to another’s life.  Perhaps it would be wise to take a moment before criticizing someone to realize that you are blind to their life unless—to mix metaphors—you stand in their shoes.

 

 

Sunday Meditation: “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.”

 

Oh I love this hymn, “Christ Be Our Light.”  It was written by Bernadette Farrell, who I learned from her Wikipedia entry is from England. 

 

 

Christ, be our light! Shine in our hearts

Shine through the darkness

Christ, be our light!

Shine in your church gathered today

Performed by the Frank Brownstead Choir.  

Lenten Retreat: Day 1, “Truth”

For Lent I am having a retreat with my patroness through reading Living the Truth in Love: A Retreat with Catherine of Siena by ElizabethA. Dreyer.  This is a book that goes through seven retreat days in the format of a retreat.  Dreyer’s book is part a series, each book in the series focusing on the writings of a particular holy person.  I was given Dreyer’s book as a gift by a Dominican sister for my perpetual profession as a Lay Dominican back in January.  You can read about that here.

 

Dreyer’s book is organized with an Introduction, a “Getting to Know our Director”—that is our spiritual director, St. Catherine of Siena—and a chapter for each retreat day.  A retreat day chapter is organized with an introduction of the day’s theme, an opening prayer, a spiritual “talk” (written, of course) on the theme as expounded on the holy person’s life and writings, a series of reflections in the form of bullet points, and a closing prayer.  I think this concept is brilliant.  I’m going to see how many of these retreat days I can share on my blog.  May each of these posts be a mini retreat for you.  Or get the book and have a full retreat for yourself.

 

Day 1 Retreat Theme: “I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (Jn 14:6)

From the Introduction:

This retreat is an opportunity to pause and encounter the God who is Truth and reflect on what it means for each of us to love and live the truth.

We do know that the word truth had special meaning for Catherine of Siena.  Her affection for this term certainly stemmed from her affiliation with the Dominican order.  As a child growing up in Siena, she lived but a stone’s throw from the Dominican Church, San Domenico.

Catherine's choice to become a lay Dominican suggests she wanted to bring the word of truth to the broader world.

At the source of her passion for truth was the God she delighted in addressing as “Eternal Truth” or “First Gentle Truth.”

              (pp.21-2)

Opening Prayer:

O all-powerful God,

O boundless most gentle charity!

I see in you and know in my heart

that you are the way, the truth, and life

by which everyone must travel

who is destined to come to you—

the way, the truth, and life

which your unutterable love establishes and fashions

out of the true knowledge of the wisdom

of your only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

You are the eternal and incomprehensible God

who, when the human race was dead

because of our wretched weakness,

were moved only by love

and by merciful compassion

to send us this one,

our true God and Lord,

Christ Jesus your Son,

Clothed in our mortal flesh.

[The Prayers of Catherine of Siena, Ed. Suzanne Noffke, New York: Pualist Press, 1983, p.34]

 

Spiritual Talk:

Three quotes out of the retreat talk.

We can outline the various truths about God that have come down to us in the Scriptures and Tradition, but it is only when we have fallen in love with God that the truth of God really becomes visible—when we are in God and God is in us like the “fish is in the sea and the sea is in the fish” [The Dialogue, Trans. Noffke, 1980, p. 55].  What followed from this love for Catherine was her will to know and follow truth more courageously.  (p. 27)

In The Dialogue, Catherine develops at great length the image of Christ as the bridge…In Catherine’s hands, the bridge becomes “a multivalent, allegorical parable for the doctrine of the Incarnation” (Benedict Ashley, “Guide to Catherine’s Dialogue,” Cross and Crown 29 (1977), p. 242).  Adam’s sin caused a separation between God and humanity that can only be bridged by the incarnate Truth, Jesus Christ.  (P. 27)

In The Dialogue, Catherine asks Christ why he wanted his side pierced when he was already dead.  Christ responds that there were many reasons, but the chief reason was that while his longing for longing for humankind was infinite, the actual deed of bearing pain was finite and could never show the depth of his love.  “This is why I wanted you to see the secret of my heart, wanted to show it to you opened up, so that you could see that I loved you more than finite suffering could show” (p. 138, The Dialogue, Trans. Suzzane Noffke, New York: Paulist Press)  (p.28)

We are finite beings, and even Catherine with her immense ability to love, can only love to a finite limit.  But the love that pours out of Christ’s heart is infinite, and He shows us with the pierced side.  Can we truly understand what infinite love is?  Here is an analogy.  Think of the heat and light pouring out of the sun.  Think on how much pours out, not just for the earth, but to flood the entire universe reaching the far ends of the solar system.  And just as we can see other suns from vast galaxies way, meaning that light is pouring out from that far out reaching us, the light of our poor little sun, a small star compared to others, also reaches far out to the distant nooks of the galaxy.  And that amount is just for a single moment.  The sun has been pouring out continuously since its creation billions of years ago.  All that light that reaches the far ends of the galaxy has been pouring out for billions of years.  Think of all that as love.  And yet that is not infinite.  It is still finite.  God’s love is infinite, pouring out for every single human being, indeed, for every single one of His creation, since the beginning of time.

 

For Reflection:

If God is “Truth,” how might this effect the way you pray?  The way you speak? The way you live?  (p. 30)

Closing Prayer:

To thee, O Lord, I lift up my soul.

O my God, in thee I trust,

    let me not be put to shame;

    let not my enemies exult over me.

Yea, let none that wait for thee be put to shame;

    let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.

 

Make me to know thy ways, O Lord;

    teach me thy paths.

Lead me in thy truth, and teach me,

    for thou art the God of my salvation;

    for thee I wait all the day long. 

(Ps 25:1-5)

Photography: March Sunset

It’s just one picture, so it’s difficult to categorize it as Photo Essay, but it is a very nice picture.  I took this Sunday evening, March 8^th at 7:02 PM.  I was just leaving my house to stop by my mother’s house as I do most evenings, and as I was getting into the car I noticed someone up the block to the east taking a picture of the sky.  I turned west and saw what had been inspiring him, one of the most gorgeous sunsets I have ever seen.  I took out my phone and quickly snapped a picture.  [Short digression: do we still say we “snap” pictures now that our phones have touch screen cameras?  The little mysteries of language.]

 

Here is the sunset.

 

Look at all those colors.  They include shades of yellow, orange, purple, and pink.  The bare tree branches are silhouette in a matrix.  If the trees had leaves in spring or summer, the sky would have been obscured.  Early March was the perfect time, and having gone to Daylight Savings Time that morning it had me out the door at the perfect moment.  I looked at the western sky ten minutes later and it had already started to dissipate.  Hopefully that is a sign that winter has ended!  I hope you enjoyed it.

Sunday Meditation: The Well of Eternal Life

The readings during Lent are powerful.  For the Third Sunday in Year A, we have what I think is the most probing passage in the New Testament, Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well in the Gospel of John.  The two homilies below will pull apart the meaning, but I want to draw attention to the central metaphor that doesn’t always get named, the well.  The well is at the center of the story.  It’s physically between Jesus and the woman, and it is deep.  It’s Jacob’s well, so it’s tied to the deepness of history, a shared history between Jesus the Jew and the Samaritan woman.  And yet their histories have diverged and severed.  The well is also physically deep symbolizing the deepness of the woman’s personal history and, to be sure, the deepness of her heart and perhaps the deepness of Jesus’s heart.  It will be Jesus’s heart that will burst forth water at the crucifixion.  For the woman, the deepness of the well displays the deepness of her empty life in need of water.  In Jesus, the deepness of the well shows the fullness of the well of His eternal life that He offers. 

 

Here is today’s Gospel reading.

 

Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar,

near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

Jacob’s well was there.

Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well.

It was about noon.

A woman of Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her,

“Give me a drink.”

His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.

The Samaritan woman said to him,

“How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?”—For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.—

Jesus answered and said to her,

“If you knew the gift of God

and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, ‘

you would have asked him

and he would have given you living water.”

The woman said to him,

“Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep;

where then can you get this living water?

Are you greater than our father Jacob,

who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself

with his children and his flocks?”

Jesus answered and said to her,

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again;

but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst;

the water I shall give will become in him

a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him,

“Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty

or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

 

Jesus said to her,

“Go call your husband and come back.”

The woman answered and said to him,

“I do not have a husband.”

Jesus answered her,

“You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’

For you have had five husbands,

and the one you have now is not your husband.

What you have said is true.”

The woman said to him,

“Sir, I can see that you are a prophet.

Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain;

but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”

Jesus said to her,

“Believe me, woman, the hour is coming

when you will worship the Father

neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

You people worship what you do not understand;

we worship what we understand,

because salvation is from the Jews.

But the hour is coming, and is now here,

when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him.  God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.”

The woman said to him,

“I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ; when he comes, he will tell us everything.”

Jesus said to her,

“I am he, the one speaking with you.”

 

At that moment his disciples returned,

and were amazed that he was talking with a woman,

but still no one said, “What are you looking for?”

or “Why are you talking with her?”

The woman left her water jar

and went into the town and said to the people,

“Come see a man who told me everything I have done.

Could he possibly be the Christ?”

They went out of the town and came to him.

Meanwhile, the disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat.”

But he said to them,

“I have food to eat of which you do not know.”

So the disciples said to one another,

“Could someone have brought him something to eat?”

Jesus said to them,

“My food is to do the will of the one who sent me

and to finish his work.

Do you not say, ‘In four months the harvest will be here’?

I tell you, look up and see the fields ripe for the harvest.

The reaper is already receiving payment

and gathering crops for eternal life,

so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together.

For here the saying is verified that ‘One sows and another reaps.’  I sent you to reap what you have not worked for;

others have done the work,

and you are sharing the fruits of their work.”

 

Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified,

“He told me everything I have done.”

When the Samaritans came to him, they invited him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days.

Many more began to believe in him because of his word,

and they said to the woman,

“We no longer believe because of your word;

for we have heard for ourselves,

and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.”

~Jn:4:5-42

 

Archbishop Edward Weisenburger once again offers a insightful explanation of the Gospel passage.

 

Archbishop Weisenburger:

“The passage opens by Jesus saying that He has to head to Samaria, a non-Jewish territory where Jews weren't even welcome. And what's ironic is that in the geography of his journey, He did not have to go to Samaria. It was actually rather out of the way.  Rather, what we see here is it's a statement of God's will that the message of the Gospel move outside and beyond the Jewish world and be presented to the rest of humanity.  It seems the Gospel really is for those on the margins, not just for those who are like us, who were comfortable within our company…And there's another great matter of significance here that was constantly pressed by Pope Francis of happy memory, as well as stressed today by Pope Leo. And it's simply that we Catholics can never be faithful to the Gospel when we become clannish, remain focused inward on ourselves, or just want to enjoy our company with one another.  No, we too, if we are to be faithful, must go out to the Samaria's of our own world today.”

 

I found the Archbishop’s observation of the progression of ways the woman addresses Jesus fascinating: “The first time she speaks to Him, she says, "You? A Jew?" Then she softens a little and refers to Him next as "Sir." Then, eventually, she acknowledges Him as a "Prophet." And finally, she asks the question, "Could He be the Messiah?" In response to her question, Jesus will respond, "I am."

 

 

For the pastoral homily, Fr. Joseph Mary of the Capuchin Franciscans explains the deepness of the woman’s hurt inside her heart and the deepness of the heart of Jesus.

 

Fr. Joseph Mary:

“Jesus sees to the heart of the problem; this woman is dying of thirst dying from the weight of her sin. It's not bodily thirst but the thirst to be seen, to be understood.  She's dying for the truth, dying for mercy dying for her hope and for meaning in her life, dying to be loved, and Jesus sees this and Jesus loves her and He wants to give her such water that she will never thirst again.  He wants to fulfill the deepest longings of this woman's heart.  And what's her reaction?  She drops her bucket, she runs back into her town, the fear the shame are gone and she begins to tell everyone about this amazing man this Jesus Christ.”

 

“Jesus comes to you in your life, He comes to you where you're alone at that shameful well of your heart, and Jesus says to you, as he says to the woman, I know you.  I know you.  I know you've had five husbands, I know the pain you're living with now, the man you're living with now is not your husband.  I know every sin you've ever committed, all the guilt you feel, the fear, the shame, I know how alone you feel.  I know your heart is thirsting for something more, thirsting for mercy, thirsting for love.  And I am love.”

Wow.  Just wow!

 

 

 

Sunday Meditation: “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ; when he comes, he will tell us everything.”  Jesus said to her,

“I am he, the one speaking with you.”

 

 

How perfect is this beautiful hymn by John Michael Talbot, “I Know A Well.”

 

Every beginning and every end,

Flow from this well.

I know nothing else,

So full of beauty in the heavens or the earth.

For all beauty and all life,

Drink from the water of her light.

I know this well will run eternal,

Ever deep and ever wide.