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Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 15, 2026
The Lord said to Samuel:
“Fill your horn with oil, and be on your way.
I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem,
for I have chosen my king from among his sons.”
As Jesse and his sons came to the sacrifice,
Samuel looked at Eliab and thought,
“Surely the Lord’s anointed is here before him.”
But the Lord said to Samuel:
“Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature,
because I have rejected him.
Not as man sees does God see,
because man sees the appearance
but the Lord looks into the heart.”
In the same way Jesse presented seven sons before Samuel,
but Samuel said to Jesse,
“The Lord has not chosen any one of these.”
Then Samuel asked Jesse,
“Are these all the sons you have?”
Jesse replied,
“There is still the youngest, who is tending the sheep.”
Samuel said to Jesse,
“Send for him;
we will not begin the sacrificial banquet until he arrives here.”
Jesse sent and had the young man brought to them.
He was ruddy, a youth handsome to behold
and making a splendid appearance.
The Lord said,
“There—anoint him, for this is the one!”
Then Samuel, with the horn of oil in hand,
anointed David in the presence of his brothers;
and from that day on, the spirit of the Lord rushed upon David.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
In verdant pastures he gives me repose;
beside restful waters he leads me;
he refreshes my soul.
He guides me in right paths
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk in the dark valley
I fear no evil; for you are at my side
With your rod and your staff
that give me courage.
You spread the table before me
in the sight of my foes;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Only goodness and kindness follow me
all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
for years to come.
Ephesians 5:8-14
You were darkness once, but now you are light in the Lord; be like children of light, for the effects of the light are seen in complete goodness and right living and truth. Try to discover what the Lord wants of you, having nothing to do with the futile works of darkness but exposing them by contrast. The things that are done in secret are things that people are ashamed even to speak of but anything exposed to the light will be illuminated and anything illuminated turns into light. That is why it is said:
Wake up from your sleep, / rise from the dead, / and Christ will shine on you.
Jerusalem Bible translation
As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth.
His disciples asked him,
“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents,
that he was born blind?”
Jesus answered,
“Neither he nor his parents sinned;
it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.
We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day.
Night is coming when no one can work.
While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
When he had said this, he spat on the ground
and made clay with the saliva,
and smeared the clay on his eyes,
and said to him,
“Go wash in the Pool of Siloam” —which means Sent—.
So he went and washed, and came back able to see.
His neighbors and those who had seen him earlier as a beggar said,
“Isn’t this the one who used to sit and beg?”
Some said, “It is, “
but others said, “No, he just looks like him.”
He said, “I am.”
So they said to him, “How were your eyes opened?”
He replied,
“The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes
and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’
So I went there and washed and was able to see.”
And they said to him, “Where is he?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
They brought the one who was once blind to the Pharisees.
Now Jesus had made clay and opened his eyes on a sabbath.
So then the Pharisees also asked him how he was able to see.
He said to them,
“He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see.”
So some of the Pharisees said,
“This man is not from God,
because he does not keep the sabbath.”
But others said,
“How can a sinful man do such signs?”
And there was a division among them.
So they said to the blind man again,
“What do you have to say about him,
since he opened your eyes?”
He said, “He is a prophet.”
Now the Jews did not believe
that he had been blind and gained his sight
until they summoned the parents of the one who had gained his sight.
They asked them,
“Is this your son, who you say was born blind?
How does he now see?”
His parents answered and said,
“We know that this is our son and that he was born blind.
We do not know how he sees now,
nor do we know who opened his eyes.
Ask him, he is of age;
he can speak for himself.”
His parents said this because they were afraid
of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed
that if anyone acknowledged him as the Christ,
he would be expelled from the synagogue.
For this reason his parents said,
“He is of age; question him.”
So a second time they called the man who had been blind
and said to him, “Give God the praise!
We know that this man is a sinner.”
He replied,
“If he is a sinner, I do not know.
One thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see.”
So they said to him,
“What did he do to you?
How did he open your eyes?”
He answered them,
“I told you already and you did not listen.
Why do you want to hear it again?
Do you want to become his disciples, too?”
They ridiculed him and said,
“You are that man’s disciple;
we are disciples of Moses!
We know that God spoke to Moses,
but we do not know where this one is from.”
The man answered and said to them,
“This is what is so amazing,
that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes.
We know that God does not listen to sinners,
but if one is devout and does his will, he listens to him.
It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind.
If this man were not from God,
he would not be able to do anything.”
They answered and said to him,
“You were born totally in sin,
and are you trying to teach us?”
Then they threw him out.
When Jesus heard that they had thrown him out,
he found him and said, Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
He answered and said,
“Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?”
Jesus said to him,
“You have seen him,
the one speaking with you is he.”
He said,
“I do believe, Lord,” and he worshiped him.
Then Jesus said,
“I came into this world for judgment,
so that those who do not see might see,
and those who do see might become blind.”
Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this
and said to him, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?”
Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin;
but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains."
"While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
You were darkness once, but now you are light in the Lord; be like children of light, for the effects of the light are seen in complete goodness and right living and truth. Try to discover what the Lord wants of you, having nothing to do with the futile works of darkness but exposing them by contrast.
Wake up from your sleep, / rise from the dead, / and Christ will shine on you.
As we move beyond the half-way point of our Lenten journey the readings focus on the major challenge facing us. Can we accept, can we really believe in what Paul called the "scandal" of the cross? Do I want to accept this extreme, even repugnant, idea that the crucifixion of Jeshua brought new life to humankind?
Do we believe in the Son of Man? Do we accept his message that the kingdom of God is close at hand and already here? Can we accommodate the idea that the agonies of our age, as of every age past, are but the birth-pains through which we must go for new life to be born?
Do we really want to live by the standards set out in the Sermon on the Mount? One way to view the coming week might be this: Jeshua had a lot to say about the poor being blessed, the meek, and those who mourn their losses and their defeats, and those who put everything into the fight for justice and truth. He illustrated these principles with examples that sound exaggerated, like 'turn the other cheek', 'give him your coat as well', and so on.
It's almost as if, in the end, he had to go through all this himself to show it can be done and there will be blessing to follow. They say actions speak louder than words. Actually actions makes words real. 'If you can't live it, don't say you can'... sort of thing. We have lots of expressions for words that do not represent reality, 'BS' being the favourite.
In this scenario, the teaching and the doing are two phases of one saving work. We are saved if we follow him, not by him taking our place - dying 'for us' as substitute victim, but by us living the values we believe even to the point where it nearly kills us! Boy! I'm a long way from that.
*****
The Gospel story gives us a rare glimpse of one day in the life of Jeshua. A chance encounter with a blind man provokes a question that urgently demands attention: What is the cause of evil, for a man to be born blind? To show that physical blindness is not much of an evil, Jeshua cures this man's blindnesss with a little improvised ritual, only demanding of him enough 'faith' to do as he is told: Go and wash in the pool named "sent".
The message here is that obedience or surrender to God is fundamental to faith/trust - and healing. We can't expect God to help us if we don't trust him. This is the first principle in the teaching of the Hebrew Bible, the Christian New Testament and the Muslim Qur'an. I still remember the day when, as a young novice, the significance of one short verse in Psalm 20 dawned on me: Some trust in chariots, some in horses,/ but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. Faith is not just assent to some propositions but a surrender of the self into the hands of God in complete trust, leaving outcomes to whatever he wills. This is still The Challenge of a lifetime. It's no wonder that the gospels have Jeshua saying on so many occasions: "I always do the will of the one who sent me."
But why does Jeshua seem to ignore the disciples' question about the origin of evil? Why are we, instead, treated to an hour by hour account of the argy-bargy that went on as the Law-and-Order people worked at making their case against him? In the end the focus is squarely on them, on their resistance to his teaching, on their unwillingness to surrender to his authority as one who has been sent, demonstrated as it is by his healing powers.
Finding the blind man had been excommuinicated from the synagogue, Jeshua uses the opportunity to show that faith/trust in God is more important than fidelity to groups or their practices. "Do you believe in the Son of God?" he asks the fellow who responds (once Jeshua identifies himself as that person), "Yes Lord, I do believe". The man goes his way, with a shrug of the shoulders now to the temple and its guardians, but the Pharisees confront Jeshua with a dare: "Would you say we too are blind? His reply is cutting, a knock-out punch: "If you were blind you would have no sin, but since you say 'We see' your sin remains."
There's our answer. Evil comes from inside us! It's our decisions that make us blind to the truth.
*****
Ilia Delio asks how is it that knowing so much, we still do not behave the right way, the logical way - learning to work together.(1) The whole Bible message is that knowledge alone cannot cure our blindness because the flaw is not just in the mind's darkness but in the will which must learn to surrender in trust to God. It takes a change of heart, not more information. We need to make a radical choice to not take but give, to not demand payment but forgive, to not be centred on my self but on the other. In one word: to LOVE.
To love our enemies so that goodness overcomes evil, and when it doesn't or can't, to suffer in ourselves the consequences rather than inflict pain on the other. That is what Jeshua did. That is what he means when he tells us to take up our cross and follow him.
This is what it means to entrust the outcome to God. Those who make war, whether on the international scale or just in the neighbourhood or family, are determined to 'sort it out now' because we've waited long enough and as Mr Trump said: 'We can't take any more!' Why can't we take anymore? Who knows what long enough is? The Cold War lasted half a century, and eventually came to an end. Finally peace did come. The time was right! God's good time.
I doubt that war will ever be eliminated from our world. The gospel seems to imply that it won't. "There will be wars and rumours of wars," at least until the day when not one single individual is so greedy or so angry or so selfish that he or she wants to attack someone. Until that day, self-defence is necessary and allowed. The journey towards that era of total peace in togetherness involves our conversion, one by one and on-going. It does not depend on some scientific breakthrough or some perfect social structuring, noron a mass awakening. It depends on what happens in the individual mind and heart as, through life's experiences, we come to see the way to love.
We start with an act of surrender to the idea that God is providing a way for us in the teaching and work of Jesus the Anointed One. Sitting on the fence, crying over the sorry state of humankind, will get us nowhere. We've got to hop down from the fence, grip his hand hard..., and maybe quietly from memory run through the words of Ps 22:
Though I walk in the valley of death, I fear no ill, for thou are with me and thy rod and staff comfort me still, keeping me on the right path in my thinking and my love.
(1) https://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?id=253770