St. Michaels Catholic Church at Corner of W. High St. and Antwerp Dr., Hicksville, OH 43526 US - Fr. Tom's Homily

Fourth Sunday of Lent "A" Homily The scriptures once again today show to us two levels of life, human and divine. Jesus is the focal point of faith, the source of light, the giver of sight. Paul encourages the Ephesians to live in the light and avoid the darkness of sin. Then there is the book of Samuel - From obscurity and total unpreparedness, the young David, in today's first reading is brought into God's light to be annointed king. Unequipped by human standards, he is singled out by God who places little stock in appearances but see the depths of the heart. David is chosen, not by human understanding....for the prophet Samuel's conclusion was that the oldest son of Jesse, Eliab, would should be annointed king. Characteristically, by divine not human understanding the youngest is chosen - God choosing the lowly to confound the mighty. Also it points out that on the human level and with human understanding choices are made on external appearances, but on the divine level God focuses on internal qualities. A human choice would be election or selection; God's choice would be forcefully annointed due to God's action. The Spirit of the Lord takes hold of David after his choice and annointing. The shade of today's light and darkness theme is thus shown in this first reading. In the call of "David to be King" , the darkness of human standards give way to the penetrating light of Yahweh's insight and decision. St. Paul says to the Ephesians: "You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of the light..." What he is saying is that the "Ephesians lived once without faith but through baptism have been enlighted. When he says: Live as children of the light he means that their works musts now correspond to their new life in the light. The scriptures contrast light and darkness throughout. Light is the arena where good is produced; darkness is where things hidden and unseemly are done. Works of darkness are depravity. The scripture refers to two kingdoms - the kingdom of light where Jesus is ruler and lord and the kingdom of darkness where Satan and his evil minions hold sway. To live without faith is to live in darkness where the devil has a chance to work. To live in light is to have the works of darkness revealed for what they are. John's Gospel: The meaning of the story of the blind man focuses on the single affirmation that Jesus is the light of the world.(v.5) To come to him in faith is to accept the light; to reject him is to enbrace the darkness. The blind man symbolizes the alienated person without faith to whom Christ comes as Savior. The entire chapter will develop the blind man's coming to sight, from unbelief to belief, while the "seeing" Jews plunge into ever greater darkness. The traditional Jewish position on divine retribution extended beyond the sinner to embrace his/her progeny as well. As the story unfolds, the man who received his physical sight grows in his spiritual vision through his recognition of Jesus. He tells those who question him - his healer was a man called Jesus (v11) then a prophet (v17), a man from God (v33), Son of God (v35-38). Finally, Christ is recognized and worshipped as Lord (v38). Thus the man's cure takes on symbolic value in terms of coming to Christ in faith. Clearly this teaching is that: We should walk by faith and not by human sight. Jesus concludes: "Those truly blind, without faith but open to Jesus, as far better off than the "seeing" Pharisees who are actually deep in darkness and sin but fail to recognize it in their certainity that they have the truth." We can say that an application of this theme to our lives is that we can look at things through the eyes of faith or we can look at things through our human sight. I have been trying to look at the war recently through the eyes of faith and pray about it in that way. Sometimes human affairs don't match God's plan, however, human beings still have to do the right thing in their circumstances. It seems that everyone agrees on one point and that is that the dictator of Iraq is an evil man. In biblical terms be would be considered a minister of the devil. The disagreement amoung most people in our country has been about how to try to deal with him effectively. Would continued containment work, or should there be appeasement, or would it be necessary to confront it. Trying to see this through the eyes of faith still has many contradictions as well as self interests involved. Would God look upon how Sadaam treats his people and his neighbors favorably? My faith tells me no, he wouldn't. God forbids killing, and torture, and maiming, and rape. That much is clear. Then again when you compare the Old Testament of the bible with the Koran, you see both have statements about going to war, fighting battles, defeating your enemies, and even talk about the enemies of God. The New Testament, however, does not have the ethic of an eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth. Then there is history's lessons which the church has learned - one lesson I remember is that the church always said that Moslems are the scurge of the church, meaning that when Christians were not living out their faith, God would use the Moslems to attack them to straighten the christians out and get them back to living the truth faith and truee christian life style. It is interesting that the only Ally the Pope has at international Respect Life conferences are the Moslems. The western world has turned against this issue. In all of this we have to ask in faith - what is God trying to do? Now that we are involved in it, of course, I think we have to support our troops and get behind them. We have to pray for good to overcome evil. We have to pray for a final and just peace. WE have to pray for the protection of innocent. We have to pray for the protection of our young men and women over there, and that they will come back home alive and safe. And We have to pray that when Iraq can be re-built that we won't goudge them by turning loose a lot of greedy multi-national to come in and take over or export some of the more seemy sides of our cultures into that country, but allow them to live by their religious and cultural values.

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