Sam 16: 1, 6-7,10-13; Eph 5:8-14; John 9:1-41
Last week Jesus was at the well at high Noon. This week he sends the blind man to the pool of Siloam. So again we have images of water and light, both themes of baptism. John’s is the gospel of the great I AM statements by Jesus. Today Jesus says “I am the light of the world.” The man born blind is in the dark. Jesus opens his eyes – and ours, to the Light. But not the Pharisees. They stay in the dark. The question: are we growing in greater light and insight to the Lord Jesus? Isn’t that what Discovering Christ is helping people to do?
“How in the dark human people are.” That’s Emily in Our Town, the great American play by Thornton Wilder. She is dead and she has been given the opportunity by the Stage Manager, a stand-in for God, to return to earth to relive one day. She sees her mother and her father, her brother, and she says: “How in the dark human people are.” Wilder was a Christian, but this is not a Christian vision. We believe we can see the Light. Emily is the man born blind – who now sees. We are the man born blind. As Adam was fashioned out of clay, who made in light chose dark, the man born blind is refashioned with clay – and so are we. We grow from darkness to light. Notice the man says, “I was blind” and “now I see.” He grows gradually, as we do, in seeing Jesus first as someone who touched him and enabled him to see, to a prophet, to a religion teacher to a worshipper of Jesus.
Emily asks: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it, every, every minute?” The stage manager replies: “The saints and the poets, mebbe. They do. Some.” We are all called to be saints. St. John Paul II says “and do so quickly.” Vatican II tells us we are all called to holiness. The man born blind has an encounter with Christ, with sanctity. Stumbling in the dark made the man born blind ready to see — the light from Light.
Like us, the man born blind also had the sacrament – Jesus the sacrament of God. The first thing he saw! You and I, through the Eucharist and other sacraments, hopefully, see more of Christ, each week as the saints did. “Siloam” means sent. All of us bathe in the baptismal pool and are sent. As people sent, we point others to Christ the Light.
We have six catechumens this year who seek to join us, Today at the 8:45 Spanish Mass we called them to the second scrutiny as they continue to prepare for the pool of baptism — water and light – at Easter.