Jesus is the light in the darkness, calling forth new life; all life springs from the light as it continues to lengthen on its way to summer. In this ambivalent month: temperate one day, cold another, the light warms the soil and beckons dormant seeds to “life’s” renewal. March knows instinctively what we intellectually know but find hard to believe.
We can deny the season but we cannot deny the light’s return. Seeing is believing…right? In our Gospel, Jesus restores a blind man’s sight. Yet, the Pharisees are unwilling to accept what they see, and ask a barrage of challenging questions: can he really see; is this the same man who was just blind? Furthermore, they ask his parents if he was born blind; and how did Jesus open his eyes. What more can the man say; he was blind, Jesus gave him sight and now he can see. Still not wanting to believe what they have seen and heard, the Pharisees drive the man away…out of their sight. Those things that we have seen but cannot explain, we choose to dismiss and deride. That’ll make it go away.
Perhaps the unwillingness to believe in the obvious may seem an exaggeration burJohn is making a point. Sometimes, despite what we see and hear, we find reality difficult to embrace. The inability to let go and put our egos aside is part of our human nature. It can be argued that believing and understanding reside in our intellect, while knowing is an intuitive part of our being not governed by by our intellect. We know air, we don’t need to believe in it. So, what does it take for His light to penetrate our hearts and and accept without question that which we can't see but know? Isn’t it curious how all in nature knows the light and responds according to its own being without question, and yet we can’t let go of our wintered-over hearts and open our eyes and see the light and listen to the cleansing waters of March:
And the riverbank talks of the waters of March;
It's the promise of life, it's the joy in your heart.
And the riverbank talks of the waters of March;
It's the end of all strain, it's the joy in your heart