Following is the prepared text from Bishop Olmsted’s homily for the 4th Sunday of Lent.

Through Christ we are able to see

March 14, 2021

“You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” – Eph 5:8

When St. Paul first brought the light of Christ to Ephesus, it was a city living in dark rebellion against God, rife with immorality, impurity and greed. Nonetheless, many Ephesians opened their hearts to Paul’s preaching, believed in Jesus and were baptized. Then, a few years after the seed of faith was planted in Ephesus, St. Paul wrote a letter to the Christians there, telling them, as we heard in our Second Reading of this Mass, “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” The Ephesians, before Paul brought the Gospel to them, were like the man born blind, whom Jesus healed. It was not because of sin that he had been born blind, but “so that the works of God might be made visible through him” (Jn 9:3).

Many of our contemporaries in America today are like the Ephesians, blind to the snares of the kingdom of darkness, enslaved by addictions and immorality. Among these are Christians who have slipped backwards into the bondage of sin. So, St. Paul’s words are right on the mark, still today, for those entrapped in the wrong-doing from which Jesus freed them in Baptism. With humility and gentleness, the Lord does not shame them, but He does warn them not to be collaborators with those who live in rebellion against God, and to “take no part in the fruitless works of darkness” (Eph 5:11). He invites them instead to turn again in contrite faith to the Light of the Lord As Jesus says, “…light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth (Eph 5:9). Therefore, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light” (Eph 5:14).

Today’s Gospel tells of two different ways to respond to the light of Christ:

• on the one hand, a blind man begins in physical blindness but ends up with both physical and spiritual vision through his encounter with Christ and belief in Him.
• on the other hand, some of the Pharisees begin with the ability to see physically but end up being spiritually blind to the revelation of God in Jesus.

Many people heard about the miracle that Jesus performed, but only the blind man defended Jesus in the confrontation with the unbelieving group of Pharisees. Even the parents of the formerly blind man, out of fear, put their son in jeopardy by refusing to stand in solidarity with him. Fidelity to Christ can entail risk and ridicule; nonetheless the formerly blind man stood his ground. Long before coming to full faith in Jesus, he boldly defended the truth about the miracle, saying, “If this man were not from God, He would not be able to do anything.”

Are there miracles happening in our day that you and I do not have the boldness to acknowledge? Think of the miracle of bread and wine at Mass transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. When we defend the truth, as the former blind man did, then the Lord leads us to deeper faith. In order to do that for the formerly blind man, Jesus sought him out a second time and spoke with him about faith, asking him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” “Who is He, sir,” he replied, “that I may believe in Him?” Jesus said, “You have seen Him and the One speaking with you is He.” Recall that, until this moment, the formerly blind man had not seen Jesus with his own eyes. The first time they met, Jesus had smeared his blind eyes with mud made from saliva and then sent him off saying, “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam.” Not until this moment did he actually see Jesus, face to face. Only at this moment, too, did Jesus reveal to him that He is the Son of Man. At once, then, the man said, “I do believe, Lord, and he worshipped Him.” Living faith in Jesus comes at a great price, but it is a treasure beyond compare, worth all it may cost. We learn from this miraculous cure, not only about the journey to faith, but also about the grave danger of cynical disbelief, a major roadblock to faith and worship.

Right after the healed man worshiped Jesus, the Lord said to the crowd, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.” Our eternal destiny is placed in terrible danger if we descend into skepticism, or let cynicism sour our soul. We must safeguard our heart from the pride that refuses to see God’s mercy, even though it abounds throughout His creation.

For good reason, the first of the Ten Commandments is this: “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.” Obedience of faith is our first obligation as His creatures. “Our duty toward God is to believe in Him and to bear witness to Him” (CCC 2087). The truth and goodness of our Savior help us to see how deformed and destructive cultures become when not open to the presence and mercy of Christ. To be able to see evil and to name it accurately frees us to become witnesses of Christ. New depths of gratitude for Christ’s Redemption lead to livelier faith expressed in adoration and worship.

There is a poem by Jessica Powers that might come close to capturing the formerly blind man’s gratitude for the gift of faith:

God fills my being to the brim
with floods of his immensity.
I drown within a drop of Him
whose sea-bed is infinity.

It is not surprising that this formerly blind man has been, from earliest times, a symbol of that journey of faith that leads to fullness of life in Christ. Baptism begins a long journey. With the grace and light of Christ, we grow to full spiritual maturity. His Holy Spirit teaches us how to engage popular cultures with the light of truth and with the balm of mercy. The light of Christ unmasks the lies and deceptions of a culture of death while building a culture of life. We learn the wisdom of following the mandate of the Letter to the Hebrews 12:2: “Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, who inspires and perfects our faith.”