Speaking about today’s gospel passage in which Jesus heals the man born blind (John 9:1-41), St. Augustine said in a homily about 1600 years ago: “Timeo Dominum transeuntem,” which means “I am afraid of the Lord when He passes.”
What St. Augustine feared—and what “WOKE” Catholics also fear—is not living in the awareness of the Christmas Eve promise: “Emmanuel, which means ‘God is with us’.” “Sleepy” Catholics don’t live in this awareness because they don’t “practice of the presence of God,” leave the cloud of forgetting behind, or journey to that special place where God is calling them. The sad outcome for “sleepy Catholics, as St. Augustine noted, “I will not be aware it is the Lord, and He will pass me by.”
What’s it like to live our days when we’ve not lived in the awareness that “God is with us” and the Lord has passed us by?
According to St. Augustine, the evidence is that we’re afraid the Lord has passed us by...sort of like having missed the parade. But, that’s the result, not the choices that got us to this point.
Today’s readings offer insight into how people like you and me get ourselves into the predicament where we’re afraid the Lord has passed us and there’s nothing we’re able to do about it.
In today’s first reading, Samuel’s example teaches us that going through the motions of being a person of faith—good as they may be and representing how many “sleepy” Catholics live their faith—are pretty much meaningless in the big picture of God’s grand scheme to save humanity. Then, in the gospel, the Jewish religious lawyers remind us that fulfilling the letter of the law—what constitutes for the most part being a “sleepy” Catholic—is also pretty much meaningless in the big picture of God’s grand scheme to save humanity.
Let’s consider Samuel’s example first.
Samuel heard and listened to God. Moreover, Samuel responded by journeying to Bethlehem where God was calling him. Samuel was then to select and then anoint the next King of Israel from among Jesse’s sons. However, as impressive as his fidelity was, Samuel’s divinely appointed task was to see and discern which of the seven sons of Jesse Samuel was to select and anoint as the next King of Israel.
That’s where Samuel fell short.
All of Samuel’s fidelity was for all practical purposes meaningless because he failed to fulfill the mission for which God sent Samuel to Bethlehem in the first place.
Superadded to all that, Samuel’s example teaches us that fidelity required—as Samuel learned—seeing what God asked him to see and discerning what God asked him to discern. Samuel failed in this mission because he judged Jesse’s firstborn son, Eliab, by his appearance.
So, what was Samuel to do now?
Samuel had no need to fear the Lord had passed him by! God was with him and spoke to Samuel in the form of a warning:
Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance, but the LORD looks into the heart.
The discipline Samuel had learned by hearing and listening to the Lord in small things as well as by journeying to the place where God was calling him provided a foundation for Samuel to live a deeper faith. This would require Samuel to be obedient to God by looking at people as God does.
That provides us insight into the measure of the degree to which anyone is a “WOKE” Catholic: To look into the hearts of people, as God does. That’s only possible, however, if we believe the Christmas Eve promise—“Emmanuel, which means ‘God is with us’”—just as Samuel believed not only that the Lord had not passed him by but was actually right there with him even though he fell short of the mark.
This experience enable Samuel to trust in God and fulfill the mission God had for Samuel by sending him to Bethlehem.
Let’s consider, second, the Jewish religious lawyers—the “Doctors of the Law”—about whom we heard in today’s gospel.
These men were pious and faithful Jews who strove to pattern every minute of each and every day of their lives by God’s law. That’s quite laudable! Even more: Their compilation of those laws provided others who wanted to be pious and faithful Jews a veritable laundry list of detailed instructions about how to sanctify just about everything in their lives: baths, clothes, sexual relations, prayer, diet, washing dishes, entering homes, and interacting with others, among others.
What’s important to remember is that all those laws grew out of the experience of faithful Jews who sincerely sought to avoid contact with evil. They asked their religious lawyers for guidance concerning what God required of them in a variety of circumstances where it was difficult to fulfill the law. They wanted to persist in demonstrating fidelity to God. That’s also quite laudable!
While the Doctors of the Law knew all those laws by heart and taught them assiduously, the Doctors of the Law weren’t afraid the Lord had passed them.
Why?
They were blind, having forgot the experience that gave life to each and every one of those laws: The experience that “God is with us”—the living God who led them from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land, a land flowing in milk and honey.
To live in that experience—to remain continuously aware that “God is with us”—was why the Jewish religious lawyers cobbled together and taught that laundry list containing all those miniscule laws. But in doing so, they and many of the people they taught became slaves to the law, worried more about the law than its animating spirit—the experience that “God is with us.” Then, as they failed to fulfill the law’s prescripts, they were afraid the Lord passed them by. For this reason, they believed, the Kingdom was destroyed and the Israelites were enslaved not only to the law but also to their imperial overlords. They wondered: “Will God ever send the promised Messiah to save us?”
Notice how far the Jewish religious lawyers had grown from the kind of fidelity that provided the source of Samuel’s faith: The abiding awareness that “God is with us” so that he heard and listened to God, journeyed to the place where God called him, and when Samuel veered away from doing what God had called him to do—to see and discern what God had called Samuel to see and discern—Samuel heard and listened to God’s correction and was obedient to it, opening the way for God to save His Chosen People yet once again through King David.
The lesson? When people like you and me eviscerate the animating spirit of the God’s law from its faithful practice, our faith grows lifeless, a matter of conforming to a laundry list of laws that has little if anything to do with the experience that “God is with us.” This kind of faith might be likened to a robot that’s been programmed to follow the letter of the God’s law. Unfortunately, a robot is clueless about what it does and why it’s doing what it does. Worse yet, it doesn’t have a soul. Then, too, this kind of faith might be likened to all those Lenten penances that have everything to do with fulfill the law but little if any relationship to the kind of conversion from sin that’s required to become a “WOKE” Catholic during the season of Lent.
Looking back at our lives, how much better would our days have been if only we had heard and listened to the God who is with us? How much better would our days have been if only we had journeyed to that place where God was sending us and done what God had asked of us? How many mistakes—“If I had only known then what I know now”—would each of us have avoided?
Yet, as Samuel’s and the Jewish religious leaders’ experience reminds us, even that wouldn’t have been enough: We were to see and discern what God asked us to see and discern by seeing people as God sees them, not judging by appearances but by looking into the heart. How many times have we blindly misjudged people and, much to our chagrin, have we unjustly inflicted frustration and unhappiness upon them—something each of us could have avoided?
In a dystopian world like this, the pathways we’ve chosen to walk are littered with the effects of our sin. We reveal in this generation yet once again that those who believe they’re faithful are blind and those who really are blind see, just like the Samuel and the Jewish religious lawyers of Jesus’ time...robots without a soul who even if they hear and listen and venture to the place where God is calling them as well but aren’t obedient to God’s correction.
The consequences of thinking we’re faithful and that we see but we’re really blind—frustration and unhappiness—evidence the Lord has passed by...we’ve missed the parade. This, St. Augustine said, should “make us afraid.”
But we must first hear and listen.
Listen again to what St. Paul reminded us about in today’s epistle:
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; rather expose them….
So, we’ve heard. But, did we listen?
At this midpoint of the Lenten season, our goal for the past three weeks has been to recall that “God is with us” so we will arise from being “sleepy” Catholics. Even if our faith is on life support or perhaps even in hospice care, this week’s scripture challenges us to experience what St. Augustine meant when he said, “I am afraid of the Lord when He passes.”
How might we do that?
Each day this week, conduct a memento mori by rereading today’s gospel calmly. Seek to experience what has happened in your life because you’ve allowed Jesus to pass by and nothing—none of the frustration and frustration—and realize that nothing changes or will change unless your faith becomes a living faith by hearing and listening, venturing to the place where God is calling you, as well as striving to see and discern as God sees and discerns.
Then, calmly contemplate these verses in particular:
“Do you believe in the Son of Man?”, Jesus asked.
“Who is he that I might believe in him?”
The answer is: “Emmanuel, which means ‘God is with us.”
Experiencing “God is with us,” those of us who have been blind will see once again our original identity as God’s beloved children and see our lives and the lives of others not as the world does but as God does. The dark veil that has kept us from seeing ourselves and others as God does will then be lifted.
Then, the remainder of this season of Lent won’t be a matter focusing upon complying with the law. Instead, but experiencing its living Source as we hear and listen, see and discern, journey to the place where God is calling us, let us be obedient to its spirit as God corrects us.
None of us has any reason to be afraid the Lord has passed us by if we believe in the God who is with us.
Comments
Post a Comment