Credo
I was an OCIA catechist for a number of years, and every year, the most common
questions we fielded from the seekers were about the rules: the rules for what to do
during the mass, the rules for the calendar, vestments, fasts, and feasts. It’s not
the craziest place to start. From the outside looking in, Catholicism must seem like
nothing more than an impenetrable maze of rules and rituals. Once you unlock the
rules, you’re in.
Our faith, wrote Pope Benedict XVI, is not simply a set of intellectual propositions
requiring our assent. It is about a decisive encounter with a person, an event which
enlarges the horizons of our existence and provides a new direction. We see this
encounter in three different forms during these final weeks of Lent.
The Samaritan woman encounters Christ at the well, having come alone and in the heat
of the day. She is an outcast, but nevertheless encounters Christ in a setting
scripturally associated with courtship. Filled with an awareness of the Living Water,
she runs posthaste to the people who rejected her to share what has happened, inviting
this same community to see for themselves.
Lazarus will be called forth from the cave next week. He will be called from death
and darkness by name, returning the light for a time. The family at Bethany along
with the mourners and others encounter the Lordship of Jesus in its fullest before
the Passion. Indeed, this final sign of Jesus is the first domino to fall on his way
to Calvary.
Today the man born blind asks for something he has never had before: his sight. We
are reminded throughout this Gospel reading that he was born blind. He wasn’t asking
for a restoration of something lost, but rather something he never had. We know the
world first through our senses. Imagine for a moment, if you can, what it would be
like to receive an entirely new one. It’s difficult; maybe impossible. His new
direction is internal, progressing from “I don’t know” to “He is a prophet” to “I
believe, Lord.” I can believe he didn’t budge from the very spot where he received
his sight. It’s easy to imagine him just looking at everything around him carefully
and re-assessing everything he knew about his world with these new sense.
These readings are read at the Scrutinies, a trio of masses in the third, fourth, and
fifth weeks of Lent and particularly focused on the catechumens and candidates who
will be received into full communion at the Easter Vigil. All three show the decisive
encounter with Christ, and the new direction which follows - a direction ordered to
discipleship, and the joy of the kerygma. We are called to share it, running with
the Samaritan woman. We are called to feel it within, like the man born blind, and we
wait patiently for the Lord to call us by name from darkness into light.
Rules are important, certainly. All relationships have them: friend groups, work
environments, and the unspoken body of beautiful rules that arise over time during
the course of a marriage. It is the love which comes first, though. The rules arise
over time as a reflection of that love. Imagine catching the eye of someone across
the room, mustering the courage to walk over and say hello, and being met instead
with a catalog of rules: on these days we do this, at these times we say these
things, we eat such-and-such weekly, and under no circumstances will we do thus. You
would be right to do an about-face and exit quickly. First the encounter, then the
relationship. Rules will come later, over time. Without that decisive encounter -
that first meeting which leads to love, they won’t matter. Our world becomes smaller
and darker.
Let us instead enter into someplace larger, knowing this place in new ways. If your
world seems small lately, or it seems just ordinary in all of the daily rhythms of
life, we can encounter Him today, right here at the altar. We can say with the man
born blind “I believe.”
“I believe.”
