Choosing to be Witness to Seeing Better

The texts for the Fourth Sunday of Lent in the Roman Catholic Lectionary deal with themes of light and dark, seeing and not seeing, and belief and unbelief. God calls the Prophet Samuel to anoint the King to replace Saul. He reviews the sons of Jesse and the men who by human observation were candidates are passed over. Through Divine revelation Samuel anoints David who is the youngest, smallest and least manly of the sons. The vision of God is of the heart and the human tendency is to only see the surface and to rush to judgement based on imperfect vision. The psalmist proclaims the 23rd psalm and presents the image of the Divine Shepherd who “prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies; anoints my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long” and lets the Covenant between God and His people be seen. Paul through the Letter to the Ephesians exhorts us to live as children of the Light we know in our intimate relationship with the Divine through Jesus and the resonance of our indwelling Spirit. We have access to knowledge of what is pleasing to God. Our vision of situations and people can be illuminated by our Spiritual intimacy with God. We have to be awake as Samuel was awake to the will of God. The episode from the Gospel of John is described today by Fr Larry Gillick; “There are several delightful symbols in this little play. “Work” and “light” go together. Jesus as light has come into the darkness of the world to do His thing, which is to present the Father Who sent Him and to do some deeds which will attract attention and a personal response.” (Gillick SJ, 2011) The belief of the Man born blind in the action of the One who made a clay paste for his eyes and sent him to the pool to wash it off cannot be shaken. The authorities are caught in the dilemma between “healing on the Sabbath- a violation of the Law” and the understanding that healing comes from God. The suggestion that Jesus is a “prophet’, at least with some of the vision and power of God, is an unacceptable possibility. The resolution of the man with new vision to maintain his account of his encounter with the Divine, results in his expulsion from the Temple. Holding to the experiences of Light and the faithful response in the face of criticism, ridicule and abandonment by friends and family is difficult. The choice is to recall and repeat for all the experience of “new vision” which is a consequence of the intimacy of our indwelling Spirit with the Divine.

Gillick SJ, L. (2011, April). Daily Reflection. Retrieved April 3, 2011, from Creighton University's Online Ministries : http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/040311.html