Dear and Respected Brethren,
By the Grace of God we are entering the sixth Sunday of the great
Lent. It is the Catholicate day or the day of the Church. (Sabha
Dinam) Our Church Fathers have named this Sunday as the Stewardship
Sunday. This Sunday we remember the miracle by which a blind by birth
was cured and eye sight was re-instated in him. All of us will agree
that the Holy Church is the divine body of our Savior where as we
often forget the other part of this statement that we all are parts of
the divine body. Are we not responsible for keeping up the purity,
divinity and holiness of the divine body? If any one of us would be
filthy, it would affect the entire body. So let us get ourselves
cleansedbefore we might observe the day of the Holy church.
We might have heard about the Aandu Kumbsaaram. (Yearly confession) It
is a pre-qualification of a faithful to attend the General Body
meetings of the Parish. It was meant that all members of the Church
must have undergone the sacrament of Confession before celebrating or
observing the Catholica Dinam. All matters regarding the
administration of the Parish as well as the entire Church are to be
holy. We often take these instructions so easily and with much
negligence.
In today’s reading we find a blind by birth on the way of our Lord and
His beloved disciples. The Apostles used the occasion to clear their
doubt. They asked: “Master, who did the sin, .this man or his
parents.” Our Lord answered: “Neither has this man sinned nor his
parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”
Our Lord confirms the following two facts:
1) There is no connection between the diseases and sins
2) Whenever and wherever there is a gift of God, it must glorify God.
We too often try to find the link between the diseases of others with
their sins. As none is aware of the sins of others, we depend the
imaginations and go further. Are we not so reluctant to praise God by
hearing or watching the blessings bestowed upon others? If we are so
we must change our attitude and we must be the first ones to praise
God and glorify God’s mercy.
In today’s reading we read, “He spat on the ground and made clay of
the spittle and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay
and said unto him, Go wash in the pool of Siloam.” The term Siloam
means ‘Sent’. In fact who is the ‘Sent’. He is none other than the
only begotten Son of God Almighty. We must think with what our Lord
had anointed the eyes of the blind. It was dirt and filth. In our
daily lives we anoint our eyes ourselves with so many types of dirt
and filth and hence we have become blind. And as a matter of fact we
often lose the direction of our further journey. Here we have been
asked to go to the one who is Sent. He has established the sacrament
of confession for our wash and chance to attain cleanliness. It is the
season when the Holy Church is preparing every one of her children for
a wash in Siloam. Our Siloam is in the Church it is the clergy. Let us
prepare ourselves for the real confession with due and needy
repentance. The Holy Church insists her children to have the Aandu
Kumbassaram during the great Lent. The permission to attend the Parish
General Body meeting is secondary. First of all we must clean
ourselves. This Sunday cautions us to clean our eyes and to have
proper eye sight. If our eye sight is poor, it is gone. Our lives
would be miserable. Let us long to have a proper and bright eye sight
and a blessed life without sin. During the Lenten prayers we do pray
“Lord enable me to have this day without sins.” When the blind washed
in Siloam, he got the eye sight and he returned to Lord Jesus as
seeing. When we would get forgiveness of our sins, we must go back to
our Lord God. We must be grateful for His abundant mercy and
compassion. We often forget or we might pretend to forget to return to
our Lord God.
There is a traditional faith about the Pool Siloam. It is believed
that the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which was in the center
of the Garden of Eden, was lying in the pond since so many years and
the same timber was used to construct the cross for the crucifixion of
our Lord and Savior. The sixth Sunday of the Great Lent is exhorting
ttus to go to our Lord and Savior and have a real and meaningful
confession as well as forgiveness of our sins and trespasses.
May God bless us all
Jose Kurian Puliyeril
Kottayam
