The Gospel account of this Fourth Sunday of Lent points to the theme of faith. It is structured as a teaching on the faith that saves; the faith that opens one to discipleship, to surrendered adoration and submission. The recovery of sight is a sign-symbol of “coming to faith,” of opening oneself to the light.
Jesus is the light of God in the world. He comes to enlighten our eyes and enable them to see the world of realities that God offers us. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Thus Jesus questions the man born blind.
What is faith?
To believe is to give credence to God, to trust in Him, to allow oneself to be convinced by Him, to let oneself be persuaded by Him, to obey Him.
To believe is not to doubt the faithfulness of God, the firmness, solidity, and truth of His promises, of His Covenant with man in Christ Jesus. In faith I live with unshakable trust in the word of God against every contrary reality, or appearance of a contrary reality.
To believe is to open one's ears to God, to the word of God, to the instructions of God. In faith I commit myself to be faithful to God. Faith understood in this way is adoration of God, devotion toward God.
For the one who, in faith, trusts in God, beyond the catastrophe of misfortune there is always a future of hope.
In the face of the great crisis: God’s “Here I am”
Today we find ourselves under the weight of “a great crisis” in a time of “the darkness of God.” Uncertainty, suffering, chaos, and panic are taking hold of individuals and nations. From the perspective of faith, do we not understand that God is above every illness? “Lord, the one You love is sick” (Jn 11:3). He knows it, and the Lord will heal when He wills and as He wills, if we remain faithful to Him.
The eyes of faith perceive the divine meaning of all creation, the divine message in everything that has been created. Everything around you that has been created is filled with messages from God. You must pass through the fog of the sensible world, in which you are immersed, with the eyes of faith. These are the eyes we need to contemplate the panorama before us, with its different characters and plots in the theater of this “desacralized” world. Today we find ourselves confronted with “an unimaginable dechristianization” (as Cardinal Ratzinger then said), but the eyes of God present to us a horizon of hope beyond this life, in the definitive encounter with Him.
To look with the eyes of God is to look with hope, the hope that places us in the hands of a loving and provident Father.
My Father knows
Abba: Father. This single word gives me peace and keeps me unshaken amid the greatest storms, conflicts, pressures, extortions, and violence. Father is the FINAL solution, for everything and for all things. My Father’s will is set upon me; my Father knows all things; my Father holds all the threads of history (mine and that of others) in His hands. Knowing this is enough for me. My Father knows.
Let the word Father never leave your lips. Live the fatherhood of God. Place it at the center of your life, at the center of your daily existence. Everything ordinary and daily should be immersed in and under the word: Abba, Father. Throw yourself completely into the arms of God: even if you find yourself burdened with worries, surrounded by evil and darkness, throw yourself into the arms of God and do not forget that you are “part of God’s family.”
From the arms of God we contemplate eternity: The eyes of our hope must be fixed upon the “novum ultimum” that God has already prepared for us in Christ.
The panorama that the world offers could hardly be worse; but let us not be afraid; nothing could seem more tragic. Yet let us not despair. Let us remain in a bold and hope-filled joy because God has intervened in the world, and we know that His interventions are certain and for great good; they are greater than every difficulty.
Under the mantle of Divine Providence
A panoramic contemplation of the history of salvation produces in us conviction in God’s Providence, that is, the conviction that God is above all a Father who places His infinite care upon us. Let us trust in God with the strongest confidence, the confidence that corresponds to God’s great closeness to us.
To be known by God means, in Sacred Scripture, to be loved, protected, and chosen by God. To be under the gaze of God, under the royal mantle of His Providence, means not being exposed to the excesses of blind, brute nature, which knows nothing of us and is cold and indifferent to our destiny, and before whose blind and therefore brutal power we feel anguish, fear, and terror. Our smallness and total vulnerability, our insignificance and frailty, need, in order not to sink, the mantle of Providence—the omnipotent Providence, which knows all things, loves me to the point of giving its life for me, is attentive to all my problems, and is never indifferent to them. Providence is the only effective defense against the cold immensity of space and the murderous malice of Satan and his followers.
You cannot love yourself more than God loves you: Trust in Him. The eternal and immense compassion and committed love of Providence are your complete and perfect security.
Our life has a future: a future full of meaning—God. “The God of hope” (Rom. 15:13), of whom Saint Paul speaks in the Letter to the Romans. Let us live in hope because its content—God—is not merely one more element in our fulfillment but the entirety of our eternal fulfillment.
God, in His Providence, has placed us in this most singular situation (with almost the entire planet confined to their homes), as the Owner and Lord of History. Let us not lose sight of Him with the eyes of faith. It is beyond doubt that, above the schemes of the evil one, the reins are held by the Creator, the one and triune God. Therefore, trust.
(To be continued in the article: Holy Mary, Star of Hope)
