Alliance for Catholic Education
Fourth Week of Lent - Sunday, March 15th
When was the first time you ever saw God? Psalm 139 tells us:
“From the beginning, Lord, you created my inmost being,
You knit me in my mother’s womb.
My body was not hidden from you,
when I was made in your secret place.
When I was woven together,
your eyes gazed upon my body.”
That’s a beautiful, intimate psalm about our creation. Each of us was made, in all our intricacies, by a God personally invested in all the details.
While this isn’t a biological explanation of how we were created, there is truth here. The truth is: at some point, we gazed, face-to-face, into the eyes of the Pure Love who created us from the very beginning.
The result is that deep within us, there is a profound desire to know, and be close to, who created us. We have a basic drive within us, as babies, to be with our mommy and daddy. And we know mommy and daddy because they are the first people we see.
This is where Psalm 139 gets interesting – because Psalm 139 takes us back before our biological birth, and tells us, in all seriousness, that there was a time, before we gazed on our parents, that we gazed upon God.
The first line in Sunday’s Gospel tells us that the man in the story was blind from birth. So, this man had never seen another person in his life. And then Jesus comes and opens his eyes. The very first person he sees is Jesus.
John is a masterful story-teller. He has Jesus make clay, which is the very stuff with which God made the first humans. This man is being re-created. And just as Adam and Eve gazed on God, and God on them, with no obstacles, so this man will gaze on God and God on him.
The man opens his eyes, and gazes upon Jesus, and throughout the rest of the Gospel, he has a longing deep within him, to know more about this man who re-created him. Finally, Jesus asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answers, “Who is he, sir, that I might believe?” “The one speaking to you is he.” “I do believe Lord.”
During Lent, we give up something we desire, a little thing that we often long for. It is a way of reminding ourselves: all our desires are just little instances of our desire for God. And only God, who we looked upon first, before we were born, will ultimately fulfill us.