Seeing Light, Being Light
(Fourth Sunday of Lent: 1 Samuel 16:1-13; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-14)
If you have ever been questioned by people who don’t want to believe you, you have a good idea of what the man born blind went through. And so you also know what the two children who saw Our Lady of La Salette experienced.
They were first subjected to interrogation by the mayor, who did not want his town associated with anything like an apparition, and was by no means disposed to believe in it himself. He even tried to bribe Mélanie, whose family was desperately poor, to deny what she had seen and heard.
After all, who could reasonably be expected to believe that the Blessed Virgin could come to this remote place, and to such persons as these? But, as we read in the first reading, “Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart.”
Even the clergy were naturally skeptical. The last thing they wanted was to have a fraud perpetrated in the name of Our Lady. They, too, questioned the children, trying to trip them up; but, unlike the mayor, they came away convinced of two things at least: these children were not lying, nor were they remotely capable of making up such a story and such a message.
As more light was shed on the event, the more the truth of the event became evident. St. Paul writes that “light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth.” He goes so far as to say that Christians are light.
The man born blind received light in stages: physically first, and then spiritually. The hostility he encountered actually helped him to deepen his understanding of what had happened to him, preparing him for his profession of faith at the end of the story.
Lent is half over. It provides an opportunity for us to be gradually enlightened, both over a six week period and from year to year. The discipline of Lent is not meant to be easy. Through it we are challenged, or we challenge ourselves, to turn ever more toward the light that is Christ.
It is time for us to become light.