SUNDAY SCRIPTURE

Jesus' healing is at work right in front of you

Posted

1 Samuel 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a

Psalm 23:1-6

Ephesians 5:8-14

Gospel: John 9:1-41

In the U.S. there is an eight-month period called daylight saving time. Each fall, we move our clocks back one hour and in the spring we move the clock an hour ahead (“spring forward, fall back”).

Aside from confusing my body’s sleep cycle and causing people to be an hour late for Mass one Sunday out of the year, the manipulation of the clock serves a useful purpose. Taking advantage of the longer and later daylight hours during those eight months presumably allows us to use less electricity in lighting our homes and thus conserve energy.

The downside for me, however, is that my mind and body shut down an hour earlier in the wintertime, making me much less productive than I’d like to be. Because it’s already dark by the time I get home from work, I’m less inclined to take that pre-dinner walk or work in the yard like I did during the summer. I have to make new rules to make the clock work for me during the months of November through March.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus also changes the Sabbath rules — by using spittle, kneading clay and healing a blind man. But he’s not simply flouting convention for the sake of it. Rather, he is making a point that the covenant between God and human beings — which the strict observance of the Sabbath venerates — is fulfilled in Jesus’ merciful act of bringing sight to human beings, both physically and spiritually. The bystanders, whose well-meaning religious zeal led them to object so strenuously to the healing, missed the entire point.

Jesus came to the world to bring judgment, “that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.” Simply put, his light comes to those who admit their blindness and acknowledge their need for healing. And nothing — not our past transgressions, nor our current narrow-mindedness, nor our inevitable future failings — can prevent his radiance from piercing our darkness.

As St. Paul tells the church at Ephesus: “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.” Regardless of what the clock says, it’s daytime for the disciple of the Lord Jesus.