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Discover the deeper meaning and connections found in this week's readings, through these great commentaries written by our priests.
Explore this week's readings and hear what God is saying to us through His Word.
Find out more about how we can mark this special day in our liturgy.
See our music recommendations for the liturgy.
This weekend is known in the Church as “Laetare Sunday” – rejoice!
How many of us are wanting to leap around for joy today, surrounded as we are by financial problems, geopolitical problems, relationship problems, health problems…?
Amidst all this, there is an opportunity in these times to accept joy as a gift – the many blessings we do have.
Ultimately our joy comes from God – the joy of knowing God and being close to God - who alone can mend our broken hearts and heal our wounds, who raised up Jesus to new life so that we might live with Him forever.
In one of his homilies a few years ago, Pope Francis said that when faithfulness to God is gone “we become unfaithful Catholics, Catholic pagans or, uglier still, Catholic atheists, because we have no reference to the love of the living God.”
In any relationship we need really to know and understand each other or we drift apart. This can be seen in many places: in marriages, where a couple who were once very much in love become strangers to one another; in young people leaving one school and going to another or onto college, where old friendships dissolve; and in parent-child relationships, where the age gap or disagreements cause a divide between them. It’s most sad when we drift apart from God or never knew Him in the first place.
God wants us to know Him and grow in our knowledge of Him in a personal intimate way. God comes looking for us through Jesus and works to bring us into that relationship. Yet, if we fail to look out for Him, fail to open our eyes to Him and how He is making himself present to us, we will never really know Him.
In the Gospel, Jesus heals a man born blind - this man doesn’t know who Jesus is at all, perhaps just His name. He then comes to know Him as just a man who heals, then this extends to understanding Him as a prophet, and then he sees Him as the Son of man and worships Him. A man born blind chooses to see and know Jesus.
In contrast, the Pharisees - who are on the lookout for the Messiah - fail to recognise Jesus despite this amazing miracle, despite the fact that He healed people, despite the fact that His teachings resonated with people. It is as if they said 'We don’t know or care where he is from. We choose to be blind.'
Can we see that the same choice is laid out for us - to see God more or less clearly? To understand Him, or sink into wilful ignorance?
To really see and know Jesus we need to:
(i) admit our own blindness / ignorance;
(ii) do as Jesus teaches to experience healing and God’s presence;
(iii) leave space for Jesus to come to us just as the man born blind did.
Lent is a time when we can choose to come to see Jesus more clearly and know more intimately. Imagine how beautiful our Catholic parishes would be if we were all filled with the joy of seeing Jesus as He really is and worshipped Him wholeheartedly.
The Gospel reading of the Man Born Blind sets the tone for today’s liturgy, in which we rejoice that Christ, the Light of the World, has freed us, the people who walked in darkness, and has led us into the radiance of faith. We ask that our hearts be illuminated, and flowers and instrumental music may be used as symbols of rejoicing, unlike the rest of the Lenten season.
A subsidiary theme is one of anointing — David in the Old Testament, the blind man in the New. How fitting, then, that today we are asked to celebrate the second set of Scrutiny rites with those in our midst who are preparing to receive the sacraments of initiation at the Easter Vigil. Those rites are designed to “uncover and heal all that is weak, defective, or sinful in the hearts of the Elect, and to bring out and strengthen all that is upright, strong and good”, and they are moments where, alongside the Elect, the whole community can reflect on what needs to be strengthened and renewed and what needs to be purged and healed in our own lives. Note that only the Bishop can dispense the Elect from the obligation to celebrate the Scrutinies — local pastors may not make the decision to omit these rites.
Do you have questions about the liturgy and how we are called to participate in it? Explore how the Church councils, saints, and popes have answered this key question and many more.
Every movement of the Mass is rich in meaning but we can become over-familiar with it. Rediscover the Mass and explore how it relates to the Exodus story, where many of its rituals come from, and how it makes Jesus present to us today.
