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Fourth Sunday of Lent - Homily

3/29/2014

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There is a story of a king walking to a cathedral and meeting a beggar at the entrance to the church. The king felt sorry for the man and offered him what his friend had just brought him from his overseas trip. It was a golden nugget. However the beggar threw it away. Then the king asked him: “Why have you done this?” The beggar answered angrily: “I need money not a rock.” As the king was entering the cathedral he thought: “Our expectations make us blind as much as the deteriorating eyes.”
          As we listen to the ninth chapter of St John’s Gospel today we can very easily focus just on the blindness of the man there. However this passage isn’t just about the blindness but it is about a very sharp sight of God. St John says: “As Jesus went along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth.” However it was more than just an observation of what was happening. As you walk or drive you observe various things. You see other cars or pedestrians, you see people doing roadwork, when the traffic is slow you can even see people eating, reading a paper or shaving. You observe these things but today’s Gospel isn’t about this kind of observation.
        To grasp the richness and the depth of the Word of God for this Sunday let me read to you a sentence from the third chapter of Exodus. It is about the moment when Moses saw the burning bush and from the bush the voice of God was heard. This is what God said: “I have seen the miserable state of my people in Egypt. Yes I am well aware of their suffering.”

My Sisters and Brothers in Christ!
        God doesn’t just observe but he listens to the cry of the heart. He looks at the heart as we heard it in our first reading. This cry coming from the heart usually is different to what the mouth utters. If we asked the blind man a few days before he was cured what he was dreaming about most likely he would say: “I want to see.” He believed that the ability to see things around him was to make him happy.  It was his expectation. However as we know there are lots of people around us who have never had to go to an eye doctor, who can easily spot a five-cent-coin on the other side of the road but they are far from happiness.
          If after 2000 years this story is still proclaimed in our churches it is because it reveals the greatest expectations of our hearts: to see God. When after being cured, the man asked Jesus who the Son of God was the Lord replied: “You are looking at him right now.” Than the man said: “I believe” and worshipped him.
The man who used to be blind didn’t reject the real tressure he was offered – Jesus Christ the Son of God. He welcomed Jesus as his Saviour who not just let him see but who had offered him the way of life which was to allow him seeing God forever in His Kingdom.
My Dear fellow believers! I pray so that the gifts you have; the ones you are proud of and the ones you even don’t notice, may allow you to recognise God and find ultimate fulfilment in worshipping Him.


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