As we celebrate
motherhood, the love and nurture of mothers, the selflessness and devotion for
which everyone one of us has great cause to be thankful, we need to remember
that Christian motherhood finds its greatest expression in the example of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, and is rooted in the motherhood of the Church, which nurtures us
in our faith, which cares for us, so that we may grow in our faith and develop
into fully-grown adult Christians, regular in our prayer and our attendance
Sunday by Sunday, formed evermore into the likeness of Christ, fed by Him with
Word and Sacrament, nourished and nurtured by Him.
In
this morning’s Gospel we see a man in need, it is not question of his sin, or
his parents’ sin, but rather of a human being in need of healing, like each and
every one of us. He wants to see, while those around him, who can see display
blindness. He is told to go and wash in the pool of Siloam, he obeys and is
healed. The Pharisees cannot agree as to who or what Jesus is; the man can state
that Jesus is a prophet, but it does not end there. The Pharisees insist on
questioning the man again, he can only reply ‘I have told you already, and you
would not listen.’ When he meets Jesus again, he can say regarding the Son of
Man ‘tell me, so that I may believe in him.’ Jesus tells him that he is
speaking to him, and he says ‘Lord I believe’ and he worshipped him. We see a man on a journey of faith, like each
and every one of us, who experiences the healing presence of God in his life,
and is brought to a deeper faith in God. He is nurtured, and through his belief,
his trust in God, his life is changed.
As we continue our Lenten pilgrimage, through prayer, fasting
and works of charity, we prepare ourselves and our lives to celebrate the Passion,
Death, and Resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, we should be
encouraged that at its heart what we celebrate is the self-giving love of God,
poured out on the world to heal us, to restore our humanity, so that we like
the blind man may see, so that we may understand what God does for us, so that we
may have life in all its fullness in Him. We need to have faith and trust in Him,
nurtured by the Church, built up in love, fed by God, fed with God, so that we can
have a foretaste of heaven, and the joy of eternal life with Christ, healed and
restored by Him. This is no private matter, something we put on for an hour on Sunday
morning, but rather an all-encompassing reality which has the power to change our
lives and transform the entire world, a world in need of the healing love of God,
to turn from the blindness of this world to the new sight of the Kingdom, a place
of nurture and healing, where we can all experience the love of God, shown to us
in Christ, who gave Himself for love of us, so that we might see, so that we might
be fully alive, encouraged and built up in love, and sharing that love with others
in everything which we say, or think, or do, so that the world may believe and give
glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed
as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and
forever.
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