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 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, they 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, like the Hebrews in Egypt, 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 lit no bright ideas in the minds of his opponents. They could only complain that he failed to obey their rules and customs.

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; their security corroded, their poverty increased, and their respect for one another disappeared. 

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; rules which only made them more comfortable, while they seemed like God’s holy people. 

Ecclesiasticus, an Old Testament Wisdom book, written and compiled by Jesus ben Sirach, offers us this peculiar prayer:

Come to our aid, O God of the universe,

and put all the nations in dread of you!

Raise your hand against the foreign people,

that they may see your mighty deeds.

As you have used us to show them your holiness,

so now use them to show us your glory.

Thus they will know, as we know,

that there is no God but you.

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.

As God’s holy people, we share the world’s great concerns about the ever widening gap between wealth and poverty; the arms race and weapons of mass destruction, the suffering of the earth itself as ice caps melt, oceans rise, deserts grow, thousands of species of plants and animals disappear, and millions of people are displaced and homeless.

These worsening crises sorely distract us from what we are called to do. They tempt us to be a people like everyone else, even as the unchurched, distracted majority, caught up in a secular, godless culture,  worship their idols of power, security, and nationalism. 

At every Mass, as the congregation rises, the priest says, 

The Lord be with you!

And you reply, “And with your spirit.”

“Lift up your hearts.”

“We lift them up to the Lord!

“Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.”

“It is right and just.”

To which he replies, “It is truly right and just,

our duty and our salvation,

always and everywhere to give you thanks.”

Our first duty as God’s holy people – before we heal the blind, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or save the earth – a people peculiarly his own gives God thanks and  praise. We must love God, love his Word, love his truth, and never forget how blindly we have groped in the darkness of our sins. 

We must study our Scriptures, the Church’s teachings, and the Lives of the Saints if we would know how to respond to the crises all around us. We support our deacons, priests and bishops, the monks and nuns, our religious brothers and sisters because they have dedicated their personal lives to prayer and their service to the Church. 

Lent reminds us to turn off the 24/7 news cycle with its polls, propaganda, 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, repent of our persistent sins, and use our reopened eyes to follow the Lord to Jerusalem, the Upper Room, Calvary, and Salvation.

“The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and to it the kings of the earth will bring their treasure.” (Rev 21:23-24)