March 2020

It is curious that Jesus waited until He knew Lazarus was dead before going to Bethany. Jesus himself is quite clear that this whole situation will lead to God’s glory and the glory of the Son. He says reportedly throughout this story that this great sign will lead people to faith – as it does for His disciples, for Martha and Mary, and for the people standing round the tomb. Jesus explains to Martha that faith in Him is the way to resurrection and life. Raising the dead to life is a sure sign of the presence and action of God. These Sundays Gospels have presented us with various images of what coming to faith in Christ is like: having a spring of water inside us, welling up into eternal life (the woman of Samaria); moving from blindness to sight, from darkness to light (the blind man); and today, in the story of Lazarus, it is described as being a movement from lying down to being lifted up, from being bound to being free, from death to life.

Tradition tells us that Lazarus relocated to Larnaca in Cyprus after the resurrection of Jesus. The church in Larnaca claims to be the site of Lazarus’ second tomb – where they buried him when he finally did die. It is a place of peace. Jesus had already brought him back to life once. He knew that was just a sign of an even greater miracle: that Jesus would bring him to eternal life, bring him to the kingdom of His promise. Faith in Jesus Christ empowers us to live in true freedom: freedom from fear, freedom from the power of death, freedom to live by the Spirit which God has placed is us – the Spirit of the risen Christ.

We see process of coming to faith dramatized in today’s Gospel. Jesus is in Jerusalem for the feast of Tabernacles. Today the Gospel begins with a healing of a blind man. Jesus puts a mud paste on his eyes and tells him to wash it off in the Pool of Siloam. The man is given the physical sight he never had. This creates a stir. The man is interrogated about the miracle. But the miracle divided the Pharisees. Some recognize God’s hand in the healing but others see Jesus as a sinner for breaking the sabbath. The man is put under pressure, and under pressure begins to assert himself and recognizes that Jesus must be a prophet. Finally Jesus returns to the scene and challenges the man, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” When the man wants to know if Jesus is the Messaih, Jesus tells him that he can see Him now. But it is not just physical sight; he now has the spiritual insight to acknowledge Jesus in faith: “Lord, I believe,” he says, and he worships Him.

This Gospel reading is especially appropriate in Lent because, traditionally, many Christians are baptized at Easdter and are now preparing. They will receive the light of Christ. We notice in today’s Gospel, how the blind man only comes to faith gradually and in the face of persecution and abuse. But at the same time the light of Christ shows up the darkness of unbelief. Some of the Pharisees cannot open their eyes to a new revelation. The parents of the blind man sit on the fence and are unwilling to speak. Lent, and this time of stress, is the time to examine our faith. We may be like parents who want to keep quiet. Or we may be like the unbelieving Pharisees who turn from the light. Lent leads to Easter which offers us the opportunity to go beyond our physical sight and to see the world with the eyes of faith and, like the blind man, recognize Jesus as the light of the world.

The prophet Hosea described God’s continuing love for the chosen people, despite their unfaithfulness to the covenant, as like that of husband still in love with his unfaithful wife, always trying to win her back.

Although they worshiped the same God, Jews despised Samaritans, in large part because the Samaritans believed that Mount Gerizim, rather than the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, was the correct place of worship the Lord. Many Jews avoided travelling through Samaria. Jesus felt impelled to go there. Jacob’s well was deep, as wells are in that region, and it was the hottest hour of the day. What a perfect setting for the story of God’s burning love for us and of our deep need for God. One can imagine the travel-weary Jesus asking humbly for hospitality wherever He went. No doubt He often encountered people at wells. We hear echoes of such conversation in today’s Gospel. The Samaritan woman in our story evidently had a colorful past, which Jesus was quick to recognize. The meeting with Jesus turned out to be no brief encounter, but a love that would never die.

The woman’s request of Jesus, “give me some of that water,” can be our prayer too. It is easy to be seduced by worldly attractions. Just as the woman kept having to go back to the well, some people find the happiness the world promises illusory and short-lived. Jesus offers us himself as the true source of life and joy. Whatever our past story, God longs to win us back. This Holy Mass is an invitation to enter into deeper communion. Do you want it? He is waiting for each one of us at the well.

Going to church is not about enjoying ourselves, but at the same time it is not meant to be a chore, something we have to do, to make amends with God. That is not what worship means. We worship to be happy; we are meant to enjoy God, enjoyment is a Christian word. So in today’s Gospel Christ refuses to worship the devil, to change stones to bread, to do anything at all which will take Him away from the joyous worship of God, His Father.

We go to church to be inspired, and this means we depend on the power of the Holy Spirit. The great writers on prayer warns us that prayer doesn’t always generate a great deal of feeling. The power of the Holy Spirit penetrates the whole human being, and there is more to a human being than feeling. Yet we seek peace in prayer and worship. We follow our Lord in the desert, to trust in God alone, to live by God’s word. We should remember that Jesus also sang hymns at the Last Supper before He went to Gethsemane. Good music is a part of the worship of God, and the Psalms are fundamentally songs. The singing doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be sincere. Above all, we should remember how important worship is. In the story of Christ’s temptations in the wilderness, which we heard as today’s Gospel, the devil was trying to disrupt Jesus’ worship. It speaks volume that the devil saw worship as the most important thing to disrupt in human life. The devil wanted to be worshiped, not for its own sake, but because idolatry is the best way to stop people worshiping God.

We are called to take worship seriously. A life without worship is a life without meaning. If someone says that he or she is unhappy, we could start by asking, how does that person worship? The Sunday Eucharist is the beginning and the end of Christian life. It takes all that we have done of any value and makes it part of the sacrifice of Christ, and so it is the end of our week. It also gives us food and drink for the week to come so that what we do, we do in Christ. This makes it the beginning of the Christian week. Christ in the desert explains the meaning of worship: it is the love for the best that there is; it is a willingness to let God our Father show himself to us and the world, and to it is to stop being afraid of joy. Christ leads us to the desert; the desert isn’t our final home, but the way to the new Jerusalem.