This Sunday is traditionally called Laetare Sunday, from the first word of the Entrance Antiphon chanted at the start of Mass. Laetare is Latin for “Rejoice!” The Church takes time out from the austerity of Lent with words and symbols that speak to us of joy and consolation.
What is the meaning of this oasis experience in the midst of Lent? The Church is reminding us that we are now just past the half way mark in Lent and before we know it, we will be celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even during this holy season with its emphasis on repentance and self-denial, we can be people of joy, that kind of joy that comes from seeing the hand of God in all circumstances of life.
Today’s gospel recounts the miraculous healing of the man born blind. The ancients viewed just about every illness and misfortune as a punishment from God for sins committed, whether one’s own sins or the sins of one’s parents, which is why the disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Jesus seizes the moment to provide them and us with a timely lesson that God has many reasons for permitting suffering and tribulation but punishment in this lifetime isn’t one of them. You are the blind ones, he tells the Pharisees. These teachers of Israel were better prepared than the common folks to recognize Jesus as the Messiah but they didn’t. While the less educated people were able to see God at work in Jesus, the Pharisees allowed prejudice and ill will to blind them to what was unfolding before their very eyes.
Consciously or not, we sometimes imitate the Pharisees in our own way. We can become so set in our personal habits that we become foolishly content with ourselves, blind to our need for improvement or repentance. We find ourselves ruled by the opinion of others and our society instead of living by faith in the unseen God. We equate holiness with simply avoiding sin rather than growing in virtue, thinking we are saved, not by our own personal holiness, but by simply belonging to the Church. We can become so stagnant in our spiritual life and so fixed in our thinking that we resist any further need for growth of mind and spirit.
Maya Angelou made the comment, “We are as blind as we want to be.” How often have we failed to see the hand of God in every situation, especially during difficult times? Instead of seeing our setbacks and problems as occasions for growing closer to God through the mystery of the cross, we blame others, we flounder in self-pity, or we become resentful toward God and others for our plight.
One thing I learned years ago when my mother died is that God does not cause bad things to happen to us. However, God often permits us to suffer misfortunes so that he can bring about some greater good. Consider the tragedy of the mudslide in Oso last Saturday.
Nearly every Sunday for 12 years I drove that highway to Darrington, passing through the community of Oso. Never once did I imagine that a mudslide would happen there, much less one of such magnitude. I did at times voice my concern over the lumber industry practice of clear cutting as being unsafe for any number of reasons. That and heavy rain over the past few weeks were what likely caused the hill to give way, catching everyone by surprise, not God.
In the wake of this disaster, there has been an outpouring of generosity and caring concern for everyone impacted. The dark side of this tragedy has produced every kind of good in many people over the past week from donating gas cards to shifting through the muck in search of those still missing.
We must simply believe that everything works for the good of those who love the Lord. That insight has enabled many people, including me, to say, “Were it not for that setback, that illness, that loss, that –you fill in the blank –, I might never have learned an important lesson, met so and so, turned my life around, or you name it. If we open our eyes to God working in our lives, we can see, as the saying goes,that the Lord writes straight with crooked lines.
Things may not turn out the way we had planned them. Still, despite our human failings, God wants what is best for us. Knowing this, we can trust him, making sense of setbacks, adversity and changes of plans that pop up at times.
If we enrich each day with a bit of prayer, with some consideration of the Lord’s words and deeds, with some reflection on our daily behavior, we can avoid being spiritually blind to Jesus and resistant to his graces. If you have been lax in your Lenten observances thus far, ask the Holy Spirit to renew in you the spirit of self-denial so that you can put aside your own agenda and focus anew on prayer, fasting and alms giving. As Paul points out, “Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord…Arise from the dead and Christ will give you light.”
Lent is about preparing well for Easter by crucifying our old self with Christ so that we might die to sin. And Easter is about rising with Christ to walk in newness of life. If you follow the Lord to Jerusalem and to Calvary, keeping in mind that he knows his way out of the grave, your Lenten sacrifices and sacramental confessions will lead you to the kind of joy no one can take from you, the joy of Laetare.