From our Pastor’s Desk

Dear Family:

We continue in this Lenten Season with the calling to conversion that began on Ash Wednesday as we were told, “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” The Liturgy of the Fourth Sunday of Lent invites us to be joyful. The invitation to be joyful is not oblivious of our present predicament and of the spiritual disposition required of us. The invitation to be joyful is the fruit of the certainty of our faith in the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who at Easter will come out victorious from the walls of the tomb; and Who is also victorious over all forms of calamity and catastrophe.

The Fourth Sunday of Lent is traditionally known as Laetare Sunday (Joyful Sunday), in which there is a moment of anticipation of Easter joy within the Season of Lent. This moment of joy is visibly shown with the color (Rose) of the vestment that could be worn by priests and with which the Altar and other sacred places could be decorated. The color rose is made from a light mix of white (that is traditionally the sign of joy and victory) with the violet/purple that is the traditional color for Lent. Being joyful is an essential element of our faith in Christ, especially in connection with the victory of Christ over sin and death. We have every reason to entertain this moment of joy, even amidst the tragedy of the moment, because Christ is opening our eyes to see what is truly necessary.

Being carried away by what the physical eyes can see has always been a problem that some men and women, of every place and time and of every age and generation, find difficult to deal with. The great prophet Samuel fell into this trap in today’s First Reading, that he was carried away by the physical appearances of the first seven sons of Jesse. God had to caution him, “Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart.” It takes some level of spiritual maturity to look beyond the physical and beyond that which happens within space and time, to see the message God is passing on to us. This level of spiritual maturity can only come about by a special encounter with God just like the blind man in today’s Gospel Reading.

As we did last week, we are reading today from the Gospel of John. In today’s Gospel, the healing of the man born blind invites us to focus on the physical and spiritual aspects of sight and light. In the first part of today’s Gospel, we hear Jesus’ response to a prevalent belief of his time: that misfortune and disability were the result of sin. That belief is why Jesus is asked the question of whose sin caused the man’s blindness—his own or his parents’. Jesus does not answer directly, but instead gives the question an entirely different dimension—through this man’s disability, God’s power will be made manifest. Jesus then heals the man.

The healing is controversial because Jesus heals on the Sabbath. The Pharisees, the religious authorities of Jesus’ time, understood that the law of Moses forbade work (including healing) on the Sabbath. They also have trouble believing that Jesus performed a miracle. To determine whether the man was really born blind, the Pharisees question him and his parents. The man challenges the leaders of the synagogue about their assessment of the good that Jesus has done. In turn, they expel the man for questioning their judgment.

The final revelation and moment of enlightenment comes when the man born blind encounters Jesus again. Having heard the news of his expulsion, Jesus seeks out the man born blind and reveals himself to him as the Son of Man. In this moment, the man born blind shows himself to be a man of faith and worships Jesus. Jesus replies by identifying the irony of the experience of many who encounter Jesus: Those who are blind will now see, and those who think they see will be found to be blind.

As in last week’s Gospel about Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman, today’s reading has many allusions to Baptism. The washing of the man in the pool of Siloam is a prototype for Christian Baptism. Through the man’s encounter with Jesus, the man born blind is healed, his sight is restored, and his conversion to discipleship begins. The man born blind gradually comes to a greater understanding about who Jesus is and what it means to be his disciple, while the Pharisees (those who should see) are the ones who remain blind.

Like this blind man, it is time to sincerely and convincingly profess “Lord, I believe”, led by our daily experiences and encounter with God. It is only this profession of faith that can save us! It is only this profession of faith that can lead us to grasp the central message of this period which is an invitation to the re-evaluation of the things we have made central in our personal and communal lives. This situation has sent everyone back to what really counts; to some of the thing we took for granted – life, family, food, safety, health, even things like healthy air and water, etc.

May it open our eyes also to see the indispensability of God in the daily management of the affairs of the world and of our personal lives. We are gradually seeing how everything we centralized is systematically and sequentially failing us. It is an opportunity to recognize that “we were once darkness, but now we are light in the Lord. Live as children of light, for light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth” (Eph 5:8-14).

Christ ended this passage by talking about judgment: ‘It is for judgment that I have come into the world that those who do not see would see’ – those born blind, for example are not under culpable ignorance. But he reserves a harsher judgment for the proud – the ones who think they know but are actually under the theological blindness of prejudice or over dogmatism. As I hear the Pharisees ask him: ‘Are we also blind?’, I make bold to ask a similar question: Can we the religious leaders of today still be blind? Can the political leaders of our country, state or local government areas still be blind? Are we still victims of prejudice, dogmatism and fallacies? Do we cling to what we think we know in the past so blindly to the detriment of new knowledge, challenge or facts? Your guess is as good as mine.

We are quickly approaching Holy Week. Like every year, we have a wonderful group of people entering into our faith this year; they are getting ready to receive the sacraments of Baptism, First Reconciliation, First Communion and/or Confirmation. They will become part of our parish family during the upcoming Easter Vigil of April 4th. As a family that we are, I encourage you to pray for them as they finish their preparation to receive the Sacraments. They need our prayers, especially prayers for them to resist the temptations of the devil. The devil does not want them to create a union bond of love with God, as he does with all of us. Keep them in your daily prayers.

And for us, let us also keep ourselves in our daily prayers, so that we may find the strength to fight against all temptations and the docility to encounter God in others, and therefore be One Body, One Spirit, One Family! Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Katharine Drexel, Saint Michael the Archangel, St. José Gregorio Hernández, Pope Saint Pius X, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Charbel, pray for us.

Yours in Christ!
Fr. Omar