The Fourth Sunday of Lent is called Laetare Sunday which means rejoice. We are called to rejoice because Easter is just around the corner. It is the celebration of the victory of Jesus, His resurrection, never to die again. He defeats evil, sin and death forever. It reveals that God’s love will ultimately prevail. Jesus is the light of the world that illumines, heals, saves, empowers, transforms and dispels darkness. We are also called to be the light of the world. Our light is derived from our relationship to Christ. We received a new way of seeing through the lens of Christ so that we see with courage, mercy and truth. We are empowered to see the misery, suffering and pain of others and work for their well being. The man born blind in the Gospel of John (9:1-41) is a model of conversion from spiritual blindness to faith, from unbelief to belief. True sight comes through faith in Jesus. He found and healed the man blind from birth. It is the initiative of Jesus because we are all found by God. No one is beyond God’s grace, mercy and love. The business of God is finding us. Blind from birth is a powerful image because the man has never seen light. It points to original sin because we are all born blind. We are born into this dysfunction world infected by violence, cruelty, hatred, division and greed. Original sin blinds us. And yet Jesus found us. He is the light of the world. He illumines and heals us. In the gospel, Jesus spat on the ground, made clay with the saliva and smeared the clay into the eyes of the blind man. It is the symbol of Incarnation when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. It recalls the creation story from the Book of Genesis (2:7) where God brought forth life from the dust of the earth. Jesus creates sight from nothing just as God created the world from nothing. It also points to the sacraments because they are the means by which God’s grace I communicated to us body and soul. We come to see by the light of Christ and by our contact with Him. The blind man was completely healed so much so that his neighbors did not recognize him. When we encounter the Lord, our lives are never the same again. We don’t look and act the same. We are transformed and transfigured by Christ. The man recognized Jesus and worshipped Him. It is the final step in the opening of the spiritual eyes of the man. He sees the reality of Jesus and becomes His disciple. To see clearly is to follow the Lord. Blindness is worship in the wrong way and it brings chaos, disharmony and death into the world. To worship Jesus is to give right praise to God and it brings transformation, harmony, peace and life into the world. Like Jesus we are called to be the light of the world because the Church is the physical presence of Christ in our tormented world today.
I AM AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD
