The Joy That Comes From The Light Of The Lord

26-03-2017 FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT (YEAR A) LAETARE SUNDAY

SCRIPTURAL READING:

1. 1 Sam. 16:1b.6-7.10-13a
2. Ps. 23:1-3a.3b-4.5.6 (R.1)
3. 2 Eph. 5:8-14; Accl; Jn. 8:12.
4. Gospel Jn. 9:1-41 or Jn 9:1.6-9.13-17.34-38.

THEME: THE JOY THAT COMES FROM THE LIGHT OF THE LORD.

Jesus said in today’s gospel passage that so long as he is in the world, he is the light of the world. We recall that light gives joy because it brings out the best in us, enables us to carry out our assignment, perform our duties aright and most especially enables us to see. 

Joy is a gift of God. It is that gift that Jesus gave to the man who was born blind. To give him back his sight was something he cherished so much and that brought joy to him. Jeannine Jordan says; To live in joy is to live for God in every passing second. It is to respond with every heartfelt sigh to all that dwells around you; it is to penetrate the clamour and listen for the stirring of a faint and voiceless soul or the whimper of a wounded heart.

To live in joy is to recognize that life is not a race and that the future is as distant as the past. It is letting every moment be a discovery, an act of grace and beauty. It is to savour the serenity found in solitude, and to live each day as if it were the first and the last and the only day of life.

To live in joy is to discover the world for the first time every morning without having outgrown the scars and the sweetness of yesterday. It is to wonder and aspire. It is to receive triumph and failure alike, humbly and purely. And it is to have been defeated without having been destroyed.

To live in joy is to seek all things beautiful and beauty in all things. It is to behold a blinding sunrise and a single blade of grass with the same amount of reverence. It is to realize that beauty and contentment are not bound to each other, and that loneliness, sorrow, and despair are all in accordance with joy.

To live in joy is to embrace the world with love. It is to love wholly and freely and to have drained your heart of all its longing. For an empty heart draws from the wealth of the soul, whereby emerges the deepest and most sensitive love of all.

To live in joy is to abide like the stars: each one reflecting the sun, but each in its own time, own distance, own strength-never knowing fear of being different or alone.

Joy belongs to anyone who wants it. You cannot keep its splendor to yourself. And anyone possessing it owns a pearly of insight-that all life is a joy indeed. That was the attitude of the man born blind.

Joy is essentially a Christian characteristic and in this liturgical season the church does not fail to remind us that it should be present at every moment of our lives. There is a joy proper to the hope of advent, then the joy of Christmas itself, so lively and warm. And as the year advances there is the joy of increasing closeness to the risen Christ.

As we approach the end of Lent, we mediate on the joy of the cross. It is one and the same joy as that of being united to Christ: only in him can each of us say truthfully with St. Paul: he loved me and gave himself up for me (Gal. 2:20). The fact that Jesus gave himself up for us should be the source of greatest happiness, as well as the source of our strength and support.

This Sunday is traditionally called Laetare Sunday from the opening words of the entrance antiphon. The strictness of the Lenten liturgy is interrupted on this Sunday with words that speak to us of joy. Today, rose coloured vestments, if they are available, are permitted in place of purple, and the altar can decked with flowers as on no other day in lent.

The church reminds us this day that joy is perfectly compatible with mortification and pain. It is sadness and not penance which is opposed to happiness. Taking part to the utmost in this liturgical season which reaches its climax in the passion, and hence in suffering, we resalise that approaching the cross also means that the moment of our Redemption is coming ever closer. In this way, the church and each of her children are filled with joy: rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you who love her.

The mortification we do during these days should not cast a shadow over our interior joy. Rather, it ought to increase it, because our redemption is near at hand; the pouring out of love for mankind, which is the passion, is coming and the joy of Easter will soon be upon us.

The church calls on us at this period to journey with Christ in his sufferings that we may also share in the glory and joy of the resurrection through his passion and his cross.

Beloved Joy has a spiritual origin beginning from a heart that loves and feels itself loved by God and in turn loves God. Love is made concrete in deeds not sweet words. This season of lent, the church draws our attention to the pillars of the Lenten season and that is almsgiving for it covers a multitude a number of sins. It is also a means we identify ourselves with the needy in our midst hence we have our SACCS project, an initiative of St. Augustine Catholic Chaplaincy, Akoka, designed to help the needy. Nothing interests the Lord than a heart that is drawn to the needy and that is why he said in matt. 25: 40 “…I tell you, whenever you did this for one of the least important of these brothers of mine, you did it for me!”

Our love will make no meaning if we do not concretize it in action and that is what we are calling on us today to please key into the SACCS project as you have done before and it has been of great benefit to others.

Our support of this project ought to be done in joy and cheerfulness since it is one way we are identifying with the lord in the needy who are created in the image and likeness of God. God loves a cheerful giver

Dear friends it is only a heart that is in union and at peace with God, even though it knows itself to be that of a sinner, goes to the source of all forgiveness, to Christ in the sacrament of penance.

Also, it is only a heart which unites its sufferings and tribulation with that of the lord. in such a situation the soul is purified and learns the lesson the Lord wants him to learn.

Suffering of itself alone neither transforms nor purifies. It may be the cause of rebellion and hatred, some Christians abandon Our Lord when they meet the cross, because they seek a purely human happiness, free from pain and accompanied by material wealth.

God asks us to lose our fear of pain and tribulation and unite ourselves to him, as he waits for us on the cross. Our soul will then be more purified, our love stronger. And we will realize that joy is inseparable from the cross. Not only that, but we will also understand that we can never be happy if we are not united to Christ on the cross, and that we will never know how to love if we do not at the same time love sacrifice.

Those tribulations that appear to our poor human reasoning as unjust and meaningless are necessary for our personal holiness and for the salvation of many souls. Suffering, when seen in its true light, when it serves as a means of loving more, produces great peace and deep joy. That is why God often blesses us with the cross.