Father Rick’s Two Minute Homily for 4 th Sunday in Lent A

March 15, 2026, John 4:1-41

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/031526.cfm

Out of Sight, Out of Touch

I was with my sister Bev while she was working on crossword puzzles. I was busy doing
my own thing, maybe reading or watching TV, when suddenly she got really excited and
exclaimed, “Oh my gosh!”
I’m so engrossed in my book or movie that I jump and think something is wrong with
her. She makes this funny grin and says she found the answer to her crossword puzzle.
And we both have a good laugh.
And isn’t that what we like to call an “aha” moment?
Another “aha” moment, maybe one of the most powerful, is when mercy warms your
heart for someone who has hurt you. Or perhaps you offended someone and can’t bear
telling them you are sorry.
Blindness to the heart of Jesus in us is scary. In the first reading, Samuel was rebuked
by God for judging with worldly eyes. He was told, ‘Not as man sees does God see,
because man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart.’
God made the human heart a sanctuary, open and inviting to those we trust.
I’ve often felt this way in the confessional. Someone reaches a breaking point where
they simply can’t bear their pain any longer. Their love for that person is crying out,
saying, “I don’t care what happened. I want to be with them again.”
Dare to listen to that cry deep within our hearts. Don’t ignore it. Don’t turn away from it.
A light dawns in the shadows of that blindness, and we begin to see them, not what they
did.
It’s like the blind man Jesus washed after he rubbed mud on his eyes. As we admit our
helplessness to change anything, a lightness unexpectedly rises from within us. And it’s
so freeing that tears fill our eyes. I often run out of tissues.
For me, it’s one of the greatest “aha” moments I can ever have, because it literally blows
our minds that we are so much loved when we don’t deserve it.
My friends, take it from a confessor who is also a penitent himself: we never have to
fear the light that Jesus will shine in the darkness of our hearts. It is so freeing, so
liberating.
Gospel Challenge:
In that dark moment, cry out with the man in the gospel, “Lord, I want to see.”

Love Your Neighbor!
 
Fr. Rick Pilger, IC  
www.bscchurch.com