Response to God’s Light

This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable.  It has not been verified by the author.

“I came into the world for judgment so that those who do not see might see and those who do see might become blind.” This man, young man, who has been blind from birth, is healed by Jesus, but Jesus teaches that there is a deeper meaning in this when He says, “when I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” And one striking thing about this gospel is that the account of the healing is just a small part of it. Most of this gospel is talking about the disputes and the division that this causes. The miracles lead a lot of people to believe. But there are those who, even when they’re seeing a clear miracle, rejected and refused to believe. And so, this is very striking, because Jesus wants unity. That’s His great prayer at the Last Supper, is a prayer for unity. And yet His coming causes divisions, or shows divisions, reveals divisions, and that’s what’s happening here. His coming is causing divisions. And I think of this because the Mission of Divine Mercy is being accused a lot now of being divisive. But Jesus, who wanted unity, is also accused of being divisive, causing division. And who is it that opposes Jesus? It’s the religious authorities, those who say, “we see, we know, we’re the experts, the doctors of the law,” what we would call today theologians or Canon lawyers, those who say we see, we know we’re the experts. We’re the religious experts. We’re in charge. Those are the ones, most of them, not all of them, who reject Jesus. Evil has corrupted them. Pride has corrupted them. And so even when God Himself, it’s God Himself, become man is right there they and manifesting, by His teaching and by His science that it’s God, they reject Him. That’s how powerful the evil has taken control of them. And so, what does this have to do with us? All of us are, in a sense, born blind because our human senses and our human intelligence, our reason, can’t perceive what’s most important. Notice in the first reading that God said, “man looks at appearances, but God looks at the heart,” at the depth of a person. We can see the appearances, but we don’t know all that’s in the heart of a person. That’s what a con man does, right? A con man is a person who knows how to gain trust, because you can’t see what his real intentions are. And so, there’s so much that we can’t see; we see appearances, but we can’t see what’s most important. We can’t see God Himself, who’s the source of everything. We can’t see what happens after a soul, after a person dies. We can’t see heaven or purgatory. We can’t see hell. We know like the children of Fatima, for example, were given a vision of hell. St Faustina had visions of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. Sometimes people are given visions of that, but most of the time, and most of us can’t see that. We don’t see all the evil spirits who are always attacking, and we don’t see all the angels who are always wanting to help. So,we’re pretty blind. We’re kind of trying to feel our way through this life, but God intervenes over and over. The Old Testament, like the reading we had today, but all the Old Testament, so many examples of God intervening to bring His light, and then especially in our Lord Jesus, the light of the world, who brings His light and then establishes His Church; and continues to intervene in the life of the Church, especially in times of danger and confusion. Especially danger that we’re not aware of, like as World War One, was ending that terrible butchery of World War One. We didn’t know that there was an even worse war that was impending, and we didn’t know of all the people at that time, didn’t know of all the dangers of communism; and our Blessed Mother came at Fatima to warn about that. So often God has guided and given His light. Also, and Jesus continues to guide the Church, especially through the manifestations and interventions of His mother. There’s a priest who has been following the messages of the reconquest very faithfully. A priest in Europe who wrote me the following, which I think summarizes well the situation. He says, “for me, as for Bishop Strickland, the greatest sign that the Pope and the Curia are not in the truth is that they do not recognize Mary’s maternal task in warning her children.” The significance of Mary is generally downplayed in the document on the evaluation of Marian apparitions,” a Vatican document that came out about, I think, about two years ago or so, “in which this Vatican department determines what Mary may and may not say.” The Vatican is telling Mary what she may and may not say, he says. “In the document, “Mater Populi Fidelis” in which the importance of her role as co-redemptrix and Mediatrix of all graces is ignored,”  and I would say, even rejected, “and recently in the new statutes of the Pontifical international Marian Academy, which sets limits on what it calls the maximalist Mariology, as if Mother of God were not the most maximalist Truth About Mary.” And he goes on, “I believe that this disregard and trivialization of Mary causes the greatest suffering to Jesus and also arouses His wrath the most. Jesus speaks to Maria Val torta in no uncertain terms, saying, ‘Woe to those who despise his mother’.” And Bishop Strickland. once again, I really encourage you to be following Bishop Strickland, you can sign up at it’s called pillars of faith, his site, and it’s free. You’ll get it by email, and it’s simple language, it’s not complicated, they’re not long. But I think it’s one of the most insightful, inspired lights about what is going on in this time of great confusion. And that’s important. This is a time of great confusion, so it’s important to see where there is a good light. And I think we have one in these messages that bishop is sharing. And so, one of them, one of them, is called “A Church Without Its Mother,” A Church without Its Mother. And he’s talking about the same Vatican document that diminishes Mary in devotion and love, which is a very ominous sign, because she is the one that satan fears so much. And many have pointed this out, but Bishop Strickland makes a special point here, which many have not made. He says, “it’s not just Marian devotion that is diminished, but this document is trying to limit and control Marian interventions, and through God, through her, God’s interventions in the Church.” It doesn’t come out and openly deny her. It couldn’t do that, but it’s like trying to limit her action, control her when we need her so much. So, I want to share with you just some quotes, and I hope you go back and read the whole thing, but just some quotes. So, first of all, he’s talking about the attitude, this attitude, which is coming out of these Vatican documents. It’s, a kind of, they can’t completely silence her but, but he says, “but never let her interrupt. Never let her warn. Never let her correct.” In other words, allow her to be present, but never powerful. “If Mary’s titles could not be denied outright,” they can’t do that, “her voice would be regulated, her warnings softened, her urgency restrained, her intentions subjected to approval, and so in our own time, even Marian apparitions are no longer allowed to speak with authority, only with permission. Mary may console, she may encourage, she may inspire, but she may not warn the Church. She may not correct the shepherds. She may not call the faithful to repentance with urgency. She must be safe, predictable, contained. Respect her, honor her place in history, but never allow her to act. Never allow her to speak with maternal command. Never allow her to stand between the Church and dangers.” So that’s the attitude he’s seeing in these documents. And so, he responds to that, he says, “This is not about marrying excess. This is not about theological balance. This is not about ecumenical sensitivity. This is about whether the Church will remain Catholic. So, let’s be honest with ourselves, the crisis in the church will not be solved by waiting for the right document, the right committee or the right moment, history has never been saved that way. The faith has always been defended by men and women who stood when standing cost them something. So be the one who stands. Stand with the mother, stand before the Eucharist and stand firm, even if you stand alone. A drifting Church does not lose her faith all at once. She loses it by degrees. One title softened, one morning silence, one pillar loosened, until the storm comes. And this brings us directly to the present hour, because what has happened, what has happened to Marian apparitions in our time, is not a footnote. It is a signal.” When he says it’s not a footnote, he means it’s not something unimportant. “It is a signal. For centuries when the Church was in danger, God sent the mother, not to flatter, not to soothe, but to warn. When the mother speaks urgently, it is because the children are in danger. But now, in our own time, something unprecedented has occurred,”unprecedented. He says, “Marian apparitions are no longer discerned primarily by their truth, their warnings or their call to conversion. They are judged by whether they are useful, manageable and non-disruptive. Mary may speak, but only if she does not alarm. This is not prudence, this is not discernment, this is not care for the faithful. This is containment.” Containment. The devil can’t completely destroy her influence, so he tries to begin containing it. And Bishop Strickland says, “and it should terrify us.” Terrify us. He’s saying we should be terrified by what is happening in the Church today, from the Vatican. From the Vatican. That’s what the bishop is saying. Clearly, what the Vatican is doing in its official documents should terrify us. That’s not Fr, John Mary is saying that, that’s Bishop Strickland. That’s why Bishop Strickland is no longer Bishop of Tyler, because somebody didn’t like what he was saying. And he says one final quote, he says, “This is not the hour for spectators, but for witnesses, not for silence, but for fidelity.”  So, I encourage you to read what the full document of what bishop said, it’s, I shouldn’t say document. It’s not documents. Sounds heavy. It’s a brief, strong message. So, when our Lord sends His mother, when God sends His mother, the mother of God, the queen of the universe, she does not need to ask anybody’s permission. The Mother of God does not need to ask anybody’s permission when the Almighty God sends her to speak, to act. And so, we need to be alert to these signs that so many are missing. Remember, at Fatima, where our Blessed Mother warned of the dangers of communism 1917 and of the second world war again, the Church leaders didn’t respond. And so those immense, some of the most, the worst things of the 20th century happened. So, one final point before I conclude, coming back to the gospel. It said talking about the parents of the blind man. They said this because they feared. It says the Jews, “for the Jews, had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be the Christ, he was to be expelled from the synagogue,” expelled from the synagogue. And so we probably don’t notice that too much, but the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible and its commentary on that passage says this refers to excommunication, excommunicated from the fellowship and worship of the Jews. So, it says this was a frightful prospect for many Jewish Christians in the early Church to be excommunicated from the synagogue. And it references two other passages in the Gospel of John. One, in John 12, it says, “Nevertheless, even many of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees, they did not confess it, lest they should be expelled out of the synagogue,” lest they should be excommunicated. And Jesus, at the Last Supper, tells His apostles, they will expel you from the synagogues. They will excommunicate you. St Stephen, the first martyr, was excommunicated, expelled. And in this gospel that we heard today, so here in the gospel, we see the man born blind who hasn’t been able to read because he’s been blind, he knows much more than all these experts who have all the roles and have been into all the studies and the teachers. The blind man is seeing the situation much more clearly than all these experts. So, these experts say to him, these authorities say to him, “You were born totally in sin, and you are trying to teach us,” us the Holy experts. And then they expelled him. They threw him out. So, they’re carrying through their threat to excommunicate him. And then it says, “When Jesus heard that they had expelled him, that they had thrown him out,” – (So whenJesus found that he’d been excommunicated,) – “He found him and said to him, Do you believe in the Son of Man?” So, this strikes very much home with us, because we are being threatened with excommunication today. And not being in communion with the Church that Jesus founded is a terrible thing, and nobody should do that. But if it is usurpers who are actually working against the Lord who excommunicate someone, that’s completely different. Should we be in communion with usurpers, the ones that bishop Strickland said, whose action should terrify us. So, to conclude, Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see might see and those who do see might become blind. Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said, Surely we are not also blind. Are we? Jesus said to them, if you were blind, you would have no sin. But now you are saying, we see, so your sin remains.” So, Jesus brings light. If we humbly acknowledge our ignorance, our need for Him, then He can enlighten us. But if we proudly, arrogantly reject Him and reject His mother, then we are bringing judgment upon ourselves. We need Jesus so much. And so, with our Blessed Mother. Let us ask. Let us pray. Come, Lord Jesus. Come, Holy Spirit. Amen.

KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
John 9:1-41
1 Samuel 16:1, 6-7, 10-13