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22 mar 2020
22/03/2020 – 4th Sunday of Lent - Year A 

22/03/2020 – 4th Sunday of Lent - Year A 

Reading 1 1SAM 16,1.4.6-7.10-13 * Psalm 22 * Reading 2 EPH 5,8-14 * Gospel JN 9,1-41

 

With His Word, God wants to educate us to live in a different way than usual, and He begins by letting us know that He sees things in a different way than us. In order to be able to change our life, to convert, we need to start right from this, from seeing all things from a new perspective. We need to get our eyes used to look at the creation, people and facts through God’s eyes, to see what He sees and we would not be able to notice.

Today’s first reading brings us to realise that God sees in a different way than men. Samuel gets to Bethlehem at Jesse’s in order to choose among his sons the man who was going to become the right hand of God as king for the people. So, he lets himself being influenced by their physical appearance and their intelligence. God however does not take into any account appearances, what men like or value. God chooses as helpers those who we would be more likely to underestimate: in this way it becomes clear that He is the one who wants to act. Samuel needs to wait until the youngest son is back from the fields, the one who was left to look after the sheep, exactly because he was believed to be too young and inexperienced to attend other tasks. In the passage from the Gospel too, full of many teachings, this behaviour of God’s appears clear. Jesus’ disciples consider a punishment the blindness in the man they run into; they have no doubt about it, because every illness was believed by everyone to be the consequence of sin. They think that the man's blindness is the punishment for a very serious sin, since to the blind is impossible to read the Scriptures; God must have cursed him so much to make impossible for him even the direct exposure to His word. And since blindness was there at birth, the sin might have been associated with his parents even.

Jesus wants to change the disciples' mind about this certainty: in fact he can see what they cannot even imagine. God has allowed that man's blindness so Jesus can make Himself known as the Messiah who  opens the eyes of the blind, as the prophets had foretold.

And then He, the Lord, first of all splatters mud all over his eyes, which cannot see, mud made with His own saliva, as the doctors of those times used to do. Then He asks of the blind an act of complete trust: “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam”. That was a special pool only regarding its name, the meaning of which was « Sent ». The water, in fact, was “sent” at source through a tunnel from a big spring. The true “Sent” by God it is Him, Jesus: in this way, playing on that name, we are guided to understand the reason for the miraculous recovery, meaning the revelation of Jesus' identity. The blind, who is promptly obeying and asks to be accompanied down to the pool, will be the only one to be open to this manifestation, the only one to see Jesus in the way the Father “sees” Him. The others, who do not need recovery, notwithstanding the fact that they have witnessed a clear miracle, show they are truly blind, because they cannot recognise Jesus as the Lord, Sent by God. Washing himself, the blind was really able to see Jesus, while the others, by refusing to recognise Him, have committed the most serious sin. In fact, who does not welcome the only Saviour, by whom will be able to be saved?

We can then start as well understanding that whoever does not wash himself in the water of the baptism will not be able to be enlightened.

Saint Paul is advising us to consider the consequences of our knowledge of Jesus as the saviour of men. First consequence it is living a life that is different from that that is lived in the world, a life the Lord likes. If only before any important choice we would ask ourselves if the Lord would be happy, often we would act differently, with more light and wisdom.

Let us thank the Lord, because with His word he shows us His thoughts, so we can live in a holy and joyful way, as just awaken from a mortal sleep, from a deep unconsciousness. By seeing reality as God sees it, we would be able to continue our conversion, the change in all our relationships, in a way for them to happen all in love.