Light a Candle

Fourth Sunday of Lent Year A

The popular adage “it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness” may seem to be a cliched expression, a naive suggestion to put on rose-coloured glasses and pretend that all the messiness in this world do not exist. But like all other cliches, there is always a certain modicum of truth in this. All Malaysians should understand this - that we have a cultural tendency to complain and gripe about all and sundry. From politics to economics, from school to work, from food to accommodations, from church to family. Even though there may be a basis in reality to all our grievances, we seem to be blind to anything which is good. And though we may at times admit the good, we choose to minimise its value, “good just isn’t good enough”, and then proceed to exaggerate the negative side of things.

In our lengthy gospel for today, we encounter various characters who have a blinkered vision of life. From our Lord’s disciples who see the blindness of the man born blind as punishment from God, to the neighbours of the man who cannot accept the reality that things have changed for the better, to the Pharisees who only see the healing as a violation of the Sabbath prohibition, to his own parents who are more worried about public opinion than to rejoice that their son’s vision has now been restored. None of them are able to see anything positive about this astounding miracle of our Lord. Only the blind man could have a valid excuse. It is obvious that he couldn’t see because he’s physically blind and yet at the end of the story, he is able to initially recognise Christ as a prophet and then as the mysterious messianic figure of “the Son of Man”. In fact, it is this blind man who makes this profound confession of faith long before Thomas does at the end of the gospel: “Lord, I believe”, and then proceeds to “worship” the Lord.

Perhaps, what is needed is the ability to see as God does. As God had to remind Samuel when he seemed to have overlooked David, the youngest son of Jesse, because he was considered to be the most unlikely candidate due to his youthful age and physical weakness, “God does not see as man sees: man looks at appearances but the Lord looks at the heart.” This statement has less to do with the irrelevance of appearances than it has to do with the reminder that our judgments on any matter should go much deeper than superficial appearances. Samuel saw the runt of the lot, but God saw in David a hero who will slay giants. Samuel saw his physical weakness, God saw his spiritual potential for greatness.

That too is a choice set before us. Just as the way of seeing is a choice we must make, joy too is a conscious, chosen response to God's grace and hope, despite the surrounding, often difficult, circumstances. We can rejoice in the face of our struggle with sins and sufferings because these painful realities are not the final word. We can rejoice because though we were born with original sin, just like the man in the gospel was born blind, there is One who can and has removed the scales from the eyes of all those who believe in Him. We can rejoice though we may be considered weak, others see us as weak, but in Christ we are strong, in Him we can overcome the greatest obstacle before us. We rejoice because we were blinded by sin, but now our Lord has given new sight through faith. So it is not naive to believe in this: “it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” We rejoice because as St Paul reminds us in the second reading, we were once in darkness, but now we are children of the light.

Repentance, the path to Joy

Fourth Sunday of Lent Year C
Laetare Sunday

I’m going to start by stating an obvious but essential truth - albeit an uncomfortable one - most of us are afraid of seeing change in our lives. From routine behaviour, to lifestyle patterns to business-as-usual way of doing things at the workplace or home or even church, change is uncomfortable to say the least. Sometimes, when we are constantly grumbling over the status quo, we still deliberately choose to maintain it for fear that change may exact a greater price from us. “Better the devil that you know than the devil you don’t.” So, we continue to plod on, weighed down by the burden of despair and hardship, rather than choose to cast off the shackles and be set free. We end up always choosing status quo over change.

As the witty Ronald Reagan once stated, “Status quo, you know, that is Latin for the mess we’re in.” Yes, today’s readings would affirm this important truth. If the Israelites had chosen the status quo, they would not have arrived at their destination which is the Promised Land. If the followers of Christ had not chosen to renounce their ego and personal agendas, they would not become the “new creation” which is what the Lord had chosen them to become. If the Israelites were contented with the hard but stable life of servitude in Egypt, they would not have made the journey to freedom. If they were contented with just consuming manna in the desert, they would not be able to savour the rich produce of the lands which awaited them at the end of their meanderings. If the early Christians had chosen to remain attached to their old sinful lifestyles of corruption and debauchery, they would never have been able to experience the joy of being reconciled with God.

So, clinging on to the status quo means relishing in mediocrity whilst rejecting the heights of glory and perfection which the Lord has called us to. The status quo discourages risk taking and encourages us to deny or circumvent the cross, which is the only means in which we hope to follow and imitate the Lord. The status quo sells us the lie that we have already arrived at our destination and that there is nothing better beyond what we are experiencing here and now. It gets us into a rut and we are stuck, making no progress but often regressing in any spiritual growth that we have attained thus far. Change and repentance are the only way we can get out of this vicious cycle. Repentance is the key that can get us out of the gaol of sin and mediocrity. The problem is that we are always expecting others to change but never subject ourselves to the same demands.

But not all change is good or positive. Change which leads us away from God ultimately leads us to our doom, to the pit of despair. This was the change desired by the younger son in our familiar parable of the Prodigal Son. He desired freedom to set his own course in life. He desired financial freedom to feed his insatiable appetite for entertainment. But ultimately, he sought freedom from the only man who truly cared for him and loved him, his father. All the other friends whom he bought with his wealth proved to be fair-weathered. They stuck with him only as long as he could finance their lifestyle of debauchery. They too were subjects or slaves of change, but a change that ate into the root of fidelity demanded by lasting friendships. Their feelings towards this son changed as quickly as his fortune took a turn for the worse.

But the younger son, after having squandered his inheritance and exhausted all his material resources, also expressed a change that is needed by all of us, a change that would lead to his repentance and eventually his redemption. We Christians call this change repentance. This is a kind of change that does not take place on the surface - one which is superficial - but a change that takes place in the depths. Repentance involves a turning away from and a turning towards - we turn away from sin, from our ego, from our old self - and we turn to God who alone remains the constant axis, the anchor of our lives, the Only One who is unchanging because He has no need to change, He cannot change, He is perfection itself. The Greek word translated as repentance is metanoia, which literally means a change of mind and heart. Before he could change his direction, to run towards his father after a lifetime of running away from him, the son had to experience a change of mind and heart. It suddenly dawned on him that his father was the true source of joy in his life and not the bane of it.

And so, we witness in the beautiful tale of the Prodigal son, a humbled younger son, a pale shadow of his impetuous younger self, not fully converted nor perfectly repented, but now committed to a path of conversion and repentance, a gradual process of inner change that would lead him back to his father. The father unlike his son, has not changed because he has no need to change. He remains loving and compassionate to his son despite being rejected by the latter. He receives his son with open arms, an unmatched joy that has not been lessened by his son’s betrayal. There is no doubt to the hearer of the parable that this father is a symbol of none other than our Heavenly Father.

Rather than to see contrition for one’s sins which leads to repentance as a dampening of our mood, a wet blanket thrown over an unhindered life where we can choose to do as we wish, such conversion is the real elixir which grants us lasting joy. If there is any reason to be joyful today on Laetare Sunday, it is this - repentance brings the ultimate change by challenging the status quo of sin: a change from fruitlessness to fruitfulness, blindness to sight, lost to found, darkness to light, sick to healed, and being born again and becoming a new creation.

And so, during these holy days of a new springtime, for that is what Lent is all about, we learn that change can be hard because coming out of slavery can be a long, daunting process. It requires that we see beyond the immediate, beyond the earthly things which we stubbornly cling to, and keep our gaze firmly fixed upon the end result: total union with God. If we do, we can endure any trial, knowing that there is a loving Father who never tires in waiting for our return to Him. Unlike all the things of this earth, our Father’s love for us has not changed, it cannot change, it will endure forever. Likewise, we too must endure. To endure to the end means we must have our minds set to never surrender, to never desire to return to the slavery from which we’ve been liberated, to always allow God to change our hearts and minds so that we can become the best version of ourselves which He has intended us to become.