March 26, 2017
The Sunday readings of Year A are meant especially for the catechumens who prepare themselves to be baptised during the Easter vigil. We are blessed to have such catechumens in our community. The reading, especially the Gospel texts, want to help them to understand more deeply who this Jesus to whom they will commit their lives in Baptism really is. Both the Gospel of the Samaritan woman last Sunday and today’s Gospel about the man born blind whom Jesus enables to see again show us three stages of entering the mystery of Jesus. The initial spark is an admiration for Jesus as an extraordinary human being. His fearlessness, his inner freedom toward everybody, his deep insight and wisdom. The Samaritan woman is amazed, because he told her all she did. The blind man sees Jesus first as the most extraordinary healer. “Nobody ever healed a man born blind.” In the course of the stories there is a second level of understanding of who Jesus is. Both the Samarian woman and the man born blind recognise: Jesus is a prophet, someone who speaks and acts in the name of God. He does not just give personal opinions, he “speaks with authority”. He has a new vision of God and of religion to offer. He speaks about God as his true father, he shows a boundless compassion towards suffering and marginalised people, he proposes a new vision of a new society built on solidarity and brotherhood. “No one has ever spoken like him”, people will say. Jesus then takes the initiative to reveal himself as the Messiah, as the one sent by God. The Samaritan women mentions the Messiah will teach them everything. Jesus ‘answers to her as also to the man born blind: “I am he.” In the Gospel of St. John, the word “I am…” refers to the revelation of God’s name to Moses in the burning bush: “I am who I am.” In Jesus God reveals himself. The way Jesus leads these two people to discover gradually who he truly is, also poses to each one of us the question: Who is Jesus for me? Where do I stand in my relationship to him? Relationships are not static. They either grow and or diminish. If we were born into a believing and praying family, God was selfevident for me as a child. As I became an adult I rightly questioned the faith of my parents. I struggled to reconcile faith with reason, the biblical vision of creation with the scientific theory of evolution, the call of the Gospel to live like Jesus a life of compassion and selfless love with the pressures to conform to the values of secular society to seek pleasure, riches and power. Who is Jesus for me today? What place has he in my life? If I am given the grace to experience in Jesus the presence of God in my life, I will feel the urge like the blind man to “fall down and worship” and like the Samaritan women want to tell others about it.cf. http://www.dignityusa.org/breath/march-27-2011-third-sunday-lent
Fr Wolfgang Schonecke, MAfr