Homily given to conclude this year’s Rhein-Meting.

1 Sam 16.6-13: God does not see as man sees.
Eph 5.8-14: Whatever the light shines on becomes light.
John 9.1-41: I am the light of the world. 

The liturgy for Mass on Sundays in Lent are marked by themes provided by set Gospels. On the first Sunday we read about the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. We get the point: we, too, must confront the evil one – and our own evil inclinations. The second Sunday gives us the Gospel of the Transfiguration. The Church, our Mother, tells us that Jesus’s Passion can only be understood in the light of his glory. On the third Sunday comes the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, the outsider who becomes an insider. There is transformative power, we see, in living water.

Today, then, we hear the Gospel of the man born blind, who is suddenly gifted with sight.

The thematic progression is pedagogical. From earliest times Lent has been the last period of preparation for baptismal candidates. The holy liturgy reminds catechumens of the structural elements of Christian faith. Next Sunday we shall read about the raising of Lazarus from the dead. A Christian is a man or woman who knows that death does not have the last word. Death, man’s age-old foe, has been vanquished by the gracious power of Christ Jesus. Then comes Palm Sunday. It introduces Holy Week, whose intensity is every year almost unbearable, allowing us to recognise and experience how our Saviour redeems and renews the world.

For all us, even though baptised as infants, it is good to consider these fundamental truths afresh in order to stand before them amazed. How wonderful God’s love is, and how concrete! The Church, the living Body of Christ, is the sacrament of his eternal love in time. Gertrud von Le Fort once sang about the essence of the Church in a glorious poem: ‘Like the blue love of heaven over all living things, you raise your tent like an arch over dispersed mankind. Like the golden sea of the sun from field to field you flow from soul to soul. […] You resemble an embrace in the depths of beatitude. You resemble a blossoming of our true home. You resemble the enlightening of our darkened reason.’

Let us say a word or two about this enlightening.

The context for the healing of the man born blind is, the way John describes it, an academic discussion. The blind man stands before us as a man carrying a heavy burden. The disciples do not pay him much attention. They talk about him as if were a left piece of luggage, a mere object. They regard his blindness as the consequence of guilt. The question that concerns them is: Who is guilty? To whom should the bill be sent, to the man himself or to his parents?

Jesus says to them: You have understood nothing. Where the Twelve think that a human reality can be reduced to a problem resolvable through calculation, Jesus sees an occasion for healing and growth: ‘The works of God will be displayed in him.’

He goes on to do a wonderful thing. The way God, on the sixth day, took dust from the earth, breathed into it, and formed man, his image (Genesis 2), Jesus spits on the ground, makes a dough, and applies it to the eyes of the blind man. He tells him: ‘Go and wash in the Pool of Siloam’, a name that means ‘Sent’. Hezekiah, king of Israel, once had that pool dug as a reservoir, while Jerusalem was under enemy siege (2 Chronicles 32). Jesus, the Son God has sent, sends his creature, reformed by his hand, to the Sent-Source in order, there, to find sight and sense. A millenarian story of salvation is fulfilled in this gesture.

The people who feature in the story are all confronted with this fulfilment. They must make up their minds about it. Neutrality is not an option. Either God has worked a wondrous sign and the kingdom of heaven is truly at hand or the thing that has happened is fake. The neighbours, the man’s parents, the Pharisees, the disciples: all must decide – is this true or false, reality or illusion? Have I till now been seeing or blind?

We, too, are confronted with these questions.

‘I am the light of the world’, says Jesus. If I truly believe this, I must draw inferences from it. This light must then enlighten everything: my outlook on eternity and time, on the world, on politics and culture, on myself. The prospect may frighten me. Who knows what I’ll discover? My fear, however, is misplaced. Whatever the light shines on becomes light. That which is touched by God is blessed, and can become a carrier of blessing.

The light carries us. The light has substance, darkness has none. Christ is the light of the world, Lumen gentium. His light shines in his Church, his beloved. She is the blossoming of our true, everlasting home. If we remain united with her, we have nothing to fear. She shows us the Son of Man. In him we believe. Through him, with him, and in him, enabled to see, we can be grateful for all things. Amen.