The Gospel for this Sunday is another long one, rich in its language and meaning. Here are a few takeaways for Laetare Sunday, the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A.
There was once a tradition to visit your baptismal font on this day, your “mother Church.” That’s appropriate because the readings are all about how that font transformed everything for you.
First, the readings tell us that we are all blind from birth
The Gospel begins, “As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth.” His disciples asked him why the man was blind: Did he sin, or did his parents sin? Neither, says Jesus.
As St. Augustine put it, “The blind man here is the human race. Blindness came upon the first man by reason of sin: and from him we all derive it.”
Jesus says he is the light of the world. We are all born blind to that light — sinners, enemies of God, ready to serve ourselves via the world, the flesh and the devil, instead of our creator.
It can seem unfair that we are all “born…
