Gaudete-Fourth Sunday of Lent

Lectionary: 31

Live as children of light, 
for light produces every kind of goodness 
and righteousness and truth.
Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.
Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness....

A crowd of people trapped in a small dark room, with no light whatsoever, would inevitably bump into each other, step on unseen feet, poke each other's eyes, hurt themselves, resent the intrusions, push back, trip and fall, be stepped on, suffer serious injury, and finally turn to outright violence. 

Some might try to organize and set boundaries; some might say, "Come, let us reason together;" and "Why can't we just get along?" But every effort to civility and social harmony would collapse almost as quickly as it started. Their plight would be hopeless, many would despair, some would be angry enough to kill others, while some would want to kill themselves. 

The Book of Exodus describes a situation like that within our History of Salvation: 

Then the LORD said to Moses: Stretch out your hand toward the sky, that over the land of Egypt there may be such darkness that one can feel it.

So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and there was dense darkness throughout the land of Egypt for three days.

People could not see one another, nor could they get up from where they were, for three days. But all the Israelites had light where they lived. (Exodus 10:21)

We need light; and we know it as a heavenly gift, a gift from above where God resides. But if brilliant light were suddenly to burst upon our captive crowd in their pathetic darkness, everyone would cry out. Most would complain it's too bright, they can see nothing, and that they're blinded by the light. But those who have been baptized into Christ live in his light! 

Not many saw the coming of Jesus to Jerusalem as the coming of the light. Even his healing of a young, blind man on a Sabbath caused no bulbs to light up in the minds of his opponents. They could only complain that he failed to obey their rules and customs.

As Jesus is presented in all four Gospels – and particularly in the Gospel of John – He always represents a crisis. This Man must be recognized and dealt with right now; He cannot be put off until another time. 

The Bible tells how God repeatedly and frequently, through the Hebrew prophets, called His people to repentance and reform. He warned them, threatened them, and sometimes allowed them to suffer like any other nation when they acted like any other nation. When their prayers and sacrifices, their generosity to orphans, widows, and aliens did not shine with the light of holiness; when they failed to be his peculiar people. 

They seemed to forget who they were; and even when they made an attempt – as the Pharisees certainly did – to live by the Law of Moses, they tripped over their own feet. Their obedience to God was defined by their fear and desire, pretenses and ambitions, rather than by the Love of God. They searched for loopholes in the law, and created what if situations that seemed to exempt them from strict observance. And then they manufactured strict rules to enforce their own human customs. 

In this 21st century we're very familiar with those who fabricate facts and insist they're speaking the truth. They think that the human being has been reinvented by the atomic age, or the computer age, or the social media age; and that we are not the same creatures that roamed the earth two, three, and four thousand years ago. We need a whole new set of rules; or, better yet, no rules at all. We’ll make them up as we go

The truth has changed, they say; and we know better than our ancestors. If there is a God, he doesn't need our love; we should give it only to ourselves and those we love; and maybe give a little something to the Bible’s orphans, widows, and aliens. 

God’s people know that if we fail to love God and his Word Made Flesh, we lose our souls; and become as useless as dead salt. If we are not holy as God is holy, we wander blindly in a sunless desert; we’re good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. Progressives go to where they think the future is taking us, and conservatives decide that this place right here is good enough, and we should change nothing. 

At every Mass, as we stand up, the priest says, “Let us give thanks and praise!” and the faithful reply, “It is right and just.” 

It is indeed right and just that we should praise God, love God, love his Word, love his truth, and never forget how blindly we have groped in the darkness of our sins. Lent reminds us to turn off the 24/7 news cycle with its polls and horse race politics, and turn back to prayer – to our daily prayers and rosaries, to weekday masses (when we can), to study the Bible and the Lives of the Saints, and meditate especially on the passion and death of the Lord. 

On this Laetare Sunday, as we rejoice that our salvation is so much closer than when we began, we thank God for the light we have been given and the opportunity to turn away from sin and turn back to the Gospel. Like the Beggar Bartimaeus, we throw off the cloak of blindness, and use our reopened eyes to follow the Lord to Jerusalem, the Upper Room, Calvary, and Salvation.