The Nazareth Page- A gospel meditation for your home
March 15, 2026 – Fourth Sunday of Lent-John 9:1-41
REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
Download this simple process to Prepare for Sunday using the Observe, Judge, Act Method
One of the more common miracles Jesus worked was the curing of blindness. And with today’s gospel drawn from John’s always profound gospel, we do well to think about this event not only literally, but also symbolically. Look for a deeper meaning of seeing clearly and spiritually in John’s narration about the life of Jesus.
In the previous Sunday gospel, I focused on the role of water in the gospels and in our own lives. Water is needed for life to exist as we know it, ourselves certainly included. Here follows a few thoughts about “seeing” as part of our spiritual awareness. I begin with a comment about how much more we see these days, especially through the lens of the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
For started we see so much more of God’s created universe than ever before! Given that seeing the most distant parts of the universe takes millions of years to reach our eyes, we are now able to observe the universe from its earliest existence. And what do we see? Millions of stars. Even millions of galaxies. We now see much more of God’s creation than ever before. And what we see inspires and challenges our view of God and Creation.
From its earliest years (now affirmed as 13.85 billion years ago) , we now see the incredible vastness of God’s universe in which we now live. While we have not yet perceived life present on our celestial planetary neighbors, (whose number is now affirmed as being trillions in number), we are led to assume that it must be out there. Otherwise, why all that landscape? Further, as far as we know, the processes of chemistry and physics are shared throughout the universe by all stars. And that’s not surprising (although certainly remarkable) given that it all has the same Creator as its maker.
A few years back I read a delightful theology book called Your God is Too Small. So true then, and even more so now. Which insight should challenge all of us to rethink how we imagine God. One option would be to think of God as very distant and outside the known edges of creation. But there’s another option which I take from our new ways of seeing. I think that we are all in some mystical way inside God. Thus, God is incredibly close to each of us. Further, God knows every cell in our bodies. (Which also gives us another incredible number in the billions). Pray therefore for the ability to see (overcoming a narrow blindness) the incredible mystery and grandeur of creation in which we live right now, and hopefully we continue to do so forever.
David M. Thomas, PhD