“The joy of the Lord must be your strength.” The fourth week of Lent is marked by the importance of joy in the lives of the faithful. Today’s Gospel bears witness to Jesus’ unique ability to transform sorrow into joy. He does this by healing – not just the physically ill, but those who are afflicted in spirit. Joy returns to the heart when wholeness is restored. Most of us suffer brokenness that goes much deeper than what can be seen on the surface of our lives. It is a hidden brokenness, and we are unsure to whom we ought to expose it. If by exposing it we can receive healing, we can have the courage to do so. If we lose hope in the possibility of being healed, we carry around that brokenness as bitterness.
Saint Ambrose, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Jesus teaches us deep evangelical poverty and humility in today’s Gospel. Having understood something of the faith, these two blind men are led to cry out – not about what they understand – but that they need mercy for their blindness. It is important, no matter what we have learned from God’s revelation, to continue to cry out to God to heal our blindness. Faith provides certainty, but one that we hold fast to without evidence. Faith is certainly rich with light – but it is a light we can never keep for ourselves or possess fully. Faith makes us beggars while pride puffs us up with what we already know or think we know about God. Faith invites us to realize again that we are blind. It isn’t that we’ve never understood anything at all, but rather that what we’ve understood is always inadequate – always less than what and who God is.
Thursday of the First Week of Advent
CHRYSOSTOM:
This may apply in particular to those who commit themselves in detail to legal rules yet take little thought for the actual embodiment of their better intentions. Elsewhere Paul confronts them directly when he says, “Consider this. You bear the name Jew, rely on the law, boast in God and know the will of God,” but in all this you derive no benefit as long as the actual fruits of good living are not present.
CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA:
Spiritually understood, the one who rightly hears the word is contrasted with the builder who builds his house on sand. In time of temptation the house falls down. The onslaught of evil wind covers it with silt, and troubled waters flood into the soul. From this turbid flood stream of iniquity the house is shaken to its foundations. This should rouse us to become aware of the danger that comes in final judgment. Those who hear the Lord’s words are like a wise man building on rock. Those who do not follow the Lord’s words are likened to a foolish man building on sand. One who practices virtue is made thoroughly able “through Christ who strengthens him.” We receive everything from God who puts things right. From him comes wisdom and insight and union with all that is good. The bad person cannot claim God as cause of his own wickedness and stupidity. He makes himself like the fool when he withdraws from that which proceeds according to nature. He then turns toward what is unnatural.