Last week we explored some of the most romantic places in our city, Melbourne. However if I asked you which city is called the City of Love, what would you say? … Paris. It has got some other nicknames too. The most famous is “La Ville-Lumière” which means “The Light City” or as it is translated more often “The City of Light” or “The City of Lights.” As the nickname “The City of Love” comes from its beautiful sights, the melodic native language and many honeymoon makers choosing it as “La Ville-Lumière” derives from being a centre of education and ideas and the early adoption of street lighting. However the famous City of Light had its time of darkness. Was it because of a blackout? In a sense it was, though the streets were still illuminated. It was a spiritual blackout. What plunged into darkness were consciences of people. In 1793 the atheistic government emerging from the French Revolution took control of the nation, in the name of the nation and claiming new ideas of the Enlightenment. What followed was described by a contemporary witness, Joseph Broz, later a member of the French Academy, in this way: “I saw Paris in those days of crime and mourning. From the stupefied expression of people’s faces you would have said that it was a city desolated by a plague. The laughter of a few cannibals alone interrupted the deadly silence.” A historian of that period wrote: “It is impossible to read of this period without impression that one is here confronted with forces more powerful than those controlled by men.” Even R. R. Palmer, an apologist for the Revolution wrote: “Even reasonable men succumbed to the contagion. A spirit, which contemporary conservatives truly describe as satanic, was there.”
My Dear Sisters and Brothers!
St Paul in the Letter to the Ephesians wrote: “You were darkness once, but now you are light in the Lord.” Why were those Christians in Ephesus light in the Lord? Because of the Lord Jesus, who upon seeing the blind man, as we could hear in the Gospel today, said: “As long as I am in the world I am the light of the world.” The Lord Jesus who was the first to see the man born blind and who made him see for the first time, also saw those women and men in Ephesus, like he did in other places, and he offered them a miracle of faith through the preaching of the Gospel. St Paul the Apostle reflecting on their journey wrote: “Anything exposed by the light will be illuminated and anything illuminated turns into light.” The illumination the Apostle speaks of is the sight of the Lord Jesus Christ who is the first to see what is plunged into darkness of sin and who gives his Holy Word to turn it into light.
In the Gospel we heard that the Lord “spat on the ground, and made paste with the spittle and put it over the eyes of the blind man.” Then he sent him to the Pool of Siloam (a name which means ‘sent’). In our over hygienic society it may put, at least, some people off. But in the tradition of the Bible, what comes from the mouth of God, as we heard it on the First Sunday of Lent when Jesus was in the desert, is the Word of God, his Good News. The spittle here is a symbol of the Word of God. The acceptance of that Good News leads to Baptism when one is bathed in the Lord like the earth bathes in the sunlight every morning and embraces a new day. The person emerging from Baptism embraces a “new day” which isn’t defined by hours but by the quality of life, by a new lifestyle.
Those atheistic leaders of France despised the Good News, they despised the Bible and they first plunged themselves into darkness then they turned the City of Light into the City of Darkness. However it is not the thing of the past. The Word of God, His Good News is despised and ridiculed today too.
My Dear Fellow Believers! We continue our Lenten journey when through prayer, fasting and almsgiving, with minds enlightened by the Word of God, His Good News, with consciences illuminated by the sight of the Lord Jesus we bring to the throne of mercy, to the Sacrament of Reconciliation our past. What for? Because “anything exposed by the light will be illuminated and anything illuminated turns into light.” For some that journey will climax at their Baptism, for most of us it will culminate with the renewal of our Baptismal Promises at the Paschal Vigil when we recommit ourselves in the midst of our Mother Church to follow Christ who said: “Whoever follows me will have the light of life” not simply for themselves but to offer to the wider community a contrast which can enlighten them as well.
St John the Apostle in his great vision saw a “City of Light.” It wasn’t Paris though. It was the New Jerusalem descending from heaven, the gathering of the redeemed who don’t need the light of lamps and the sun because Jesus Christ is their light. Before that vision is manifested at the end of times we, the followers of the Lord Jesus, are called to be light in the world we live in.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers!
St Paul in the Letter to the Ephesians wrote: “You were darkness once, but now you are light in the Lord.” Why were those Christians in Ephesus light in the Lord? Because of the Lord Jesus, who upon seeing the blind man, as we could hear in the Gospel today, said: “As long as I am in the world I am the light of the world.” The Lord Jesus who was the first to see the man born blind and who made him see for the first time, also saw those women and men in Ephesus, like he did in other places, and he offered them a miracle of faith through the preaching of the Gospel. St Paul the Apostle reflecting on their journey wrote: “Anything exposed by the light will be illuminated and anything illuminated turns into light.” The illumination the Apostle speaks of is the sight of the Lord Jesus Christ who is the first to see what is plunged into darkness of sin and who gives his Holy Word to turn it into light.
In the Gospel we heard that the Lord “spat on the ground, and made paste with the spittle and put it over the eyes of the blind man.” Then he sent him to the Pool of Siloam (a name which means ‘sent’). In our over hygienic society it may put, at least, some people off. But in the tradition of the Bible, what comes from the mouth of God, as we heard it on the First Sunday of Lent when Jesus was in the desert, is the Word of God, his Good News. The spittle here is a symbol of the Word of God. The acceptance of that Good News leads to Baptism when one is bathed in the Lord like the earth bathes in the sunlight every morning and embraces a new day. The person emerging from Baptism embraces a “new day” which isn’t defined by hours but by the quality of life, by a new lifestyle.
Those atheistic leaders of France despised the Good News, they despised the Bible and they first plunged themselves into darkness then they turned the City of Light into the City of Darkness. However it is not the thing of the past. The Word of God, His Good News is despised and ridiculed today too.
My Dear Fellow Believers! We continue our Lenten journey when through prayer, fasting and almsgiving, with minds enlightened by the Word of God, His Good News, with consciences illuminated by the sight of the Lord Jesus we bring to the throne of mercy, to the Sacrament of Reconciliation our past. What for? Because “anything exposed by the light will be illuminated and anything illuminated turns into light.” For some that journey will climax at their Baptism, for most of us it will culminate with the renewal of our Baptismal Promises at the Paschal Vigil when we recommit ourselves in the midst of our Mother Church to follow Christ who said: “Whoever follows me will have the light of life” not simply for themselves but to offer to the wider community a contrast which can enlighten them as well.
St John the Apostle in his great vision saw a “City of Light.” It wasn’t Paris though. It was the New Jerusalem descending from heaven, the gathering of the redeemed who don’t need the light of lamps and the sun because Jesus Christ is their light. Before that vision is manifested at the end of times we, the followers of the Lord Jesus, are called to be light in the world we live in.
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