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HOMILIES

2. Homily - Sunday, March 22, 2020

Fourth Sunday of Lent, Laetare - Year A (Jn 9:1-41)

Lord, come to knock on the door of our hearts!

Is God essential to us?

It sometimes happens to us that we are faced with challenges as individuals. However,
during this past week, we have all been hard hit by the same challenge, a pandemic with
many repercussions. One of these alarming repercussions is that gatherings in churches,
just as all other public gatherings, have been cancelled. The churches themselves, the doors
of our churches are now closed for an indeterminate period of time. However, keeping our
houses of prayer open is something essential.

During this pandemic, even what we would have considered to be essential is affected!
Most of the time, even when we have to let go of the superfluous, the essentials are not
affected. But in these times that seem so strange to us, even what is essential is affected.

Yet, in a manner of speaking, that what is the most essential of all the essentials remains
always present! For each and every one of us! For God, you are essential. Now we could turn
around the question and ask, is God really essential for us?
In our eyes, is God so essential that he is first of all the essentials? I have to repeat this: For
God, you are essential, you come first. Many things are essential, of course, many things are
important in life, but for God, human beings are the first of all the essentials. This brings
back the question: Is God the first essential in our life?

In today’s Gospel, we see a person born blind who is cured by Jesus. Several times in the
Gospels, it happens that someone meets Jesus and asks: “Lord, can you heal me?” The Lord
answers: “Do you believe?” To which he replies: “Yes, I believe.” “Be healed,” concludes
Jesus, who thus brings about the desired healing.

But in today’s passage, we see a different approach. It is not that the man born blind asks
Jesus to heal him. The man doesn’t really know Jesus. It is Jesus who approaches the man. It
is Jesus who starts the conversation. It is Jesus who touches him and tells him: “Go, wash in
the pool.” In leaving, all that the man born blind knows is that Jesus cured him. At some point
in the future, the man will learn that it was Jesus, God Himself who healed him.

(cont’d)

Collection of texts by the Most Rev. Christian Lépine 106