Take away the stone: the pain, the mistakes, even the failures. Do not hide them inside you, in a dark, lonely, closed room. Take away the stone: draw out everything that is inside. “Ah, but I am ashamed.” Throw it to me with confidence, says the Lord; I will not be scandalized. Throw it to me without fear because I am with you, I care about you and I want you to start living again.
--Pope Francis
Image source: John August Swanson, Take Away the Stone (2005), available for purchase at: https://johnaugustswanson.com/catalog/take-away-the-stone/?srsltid=AfmBOopRavwW-ty9XBgp2rKEnY2-1s5yM7TBt8q3H9MroHZDd0aVrJUL
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Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live…
Can we find new life in Christ?
De Profundis, as Psalm 130 is more commonly known, speaks to the experience of an individual who has found himself in dire need of God’s mercy: Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord, the psalmist sings, Lord, hear my voice! It is a psalm that would perhaps have brought comfort to the people of Israel exiled to Babylon: For with the Lord is kindness and plenteous redemption; and he will redeem Israel from all their iniquities. In the midst of this difficult exile, the people of Israel hear words of restoration from the prophet Ezekiel, words of hope and promise that only God can provide: O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them, and bring you back to the land of Israel. Their identity will come not only from the land that will be restored to them, but from God’s spirit implanted in them: I will put my spirit in you that you may live, God promises. To be in relationship with the God who loves them is to have the life God promises.
Jesus’ friend Lazarus has not fallen out of right relationship with the Lord as the people of Israel had. But in John’s Gospel, Jesus uses his good friend’s illness as a means through which he can reveal the Father’s work through him and with him, that all might come to believe. When, even in the midst of her grief, Martha expresses her continued trust in Jesus’ plan, Jesus reassures her definitively: whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live. If Lazarus can be raised, set free from death itself, then all have the opportunity to be freed from their fear of death, and live. We can live, as Paul tells the Romans, in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in us. Physical death, even a body dead because of sin, is as nothing so long as the spirit is alive because of righteousness, for the one who raised Christ from the dead gives life to our mortal bodies also. If Jesus dwells in us, if we allow him entry, then we can be alive in Christ, finding new life in him and giving resounding witness to the glory of God!
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
Friends, today in the strange and strikingly beautiful account of the healing of the man born blind in John’s Gospel, we find an iconic representation of Christianity as a way of seeing. Jesus spits on the ground and makes a mud paste, which he then rubs onto the man’s eyes. When the man washes his eyes in the pool of Siloam as Jesus had instructed him, his sight is restored.
The crowds are amazed, but the Pharisees—consternated and skeptical—accuse him of being naïve and the one who healed him of being a sinner. With disarming simplicity the visionary responds: “If he is a sinner, I do not know. One thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see.”
This is precisely what all Christians say when they have encountered the light of Christ. It was St. Augustine who saw in the making of the mud paste a metaphor for the Incarnation: the divine power mixing with the earth, resulting in the formation of a healing balm. When this salve of God made flesh is rubbed onto our eyes blinded by sin, we come again to see.
Reflect: How is the Christian way of seeing different from the culture’s way of seeing?
--Bishop Robert Barron
Image source: El Greco, Healing of the Man Born Blind (1570), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healing_of_the_Man_Born_Blind_%28El_Greco,_Dresden%29
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Please, Lord, join me on the road, enter into my closed room, and take my foolishness away. Open my mind and heart to the great mystery of your active presence in my life, and give me the courage to help others discover your presence in their lives. Amen.
--Henri Nouwen
Image source: https://yearningheartsjourney.blogspot.com/2011/09/living-in-constant-awareness-of-gods.html
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