By Jason Chaudhry, Fiat Ventures
Fourth Sunday of Lent
The weather’s getting nicer! Sure, it’s still pretty wet and muddy but it’s a lot warmer and the breeze is just right. I would call this right here proper hiking weather, the type of weather that makes you want to grab a backpack full of snacks and a water bottle to hit a trail. It’s weather like this that reminds me of when I first started hiking down the street from my house during my senior year of high school, right in the middle of covid. And it was those hikes, in the middle of a global crisis no less, that helped me to start seeing things a lot more clearly.
I grew up in a mixed faith laissez-faire household, and if I’m being quite candid, I didn’t have any particular interest in religion or faith of any kind. I stuck to doing decently well enough in school, going to school clubs and chatting with friends about Halo and Guitar Hero. It wasn’t until right around senior year that old questions I’d asked myself when I was twelve got revisited. Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? What happens after I’m gone? As a kid, they weren’t worth thinking about because I was sure that I wouldn’t get anything close to a coherent answer. I shut my eyes and kept on marching forward, uncertain as to what the future would bring but carrying an unknown gift that I would later treasure: Hope.
That hope turned to faith is what we see on full display in our reading this Sunday with the story of the blind beggar. Jesus smeared clay on his eyes and told him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. He listened and his vision was restored. When asked how he came to see again, he credits Jesus’ instruction and proclaims Him as a prophet. When interrogated on it further, he holds his ground and speaks the truth in its fullness just the same as before and is thrown out by the Pharisees for it. Once more, Jesus returns to the beggar to confirm His identity as the Son of Man and to rebuke the misguided Pharisees. Jesus closes His interaction with the beggar by stating “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind”.
In a similar light, I had grown up fairly levelheaded in the material things immediately in front of me like school, but I had been stumbling along blindly when it came to spiritual things up until that point. Right and wrong were what the world around me told me to believe, and that worldly catechesis often didn’t line up with what God had prescribed for my life. Ultimately, my faith journey that would lead me to loving my neighbor as myself began far away from anyone on an unmarked hiking trail. I would go there more and more and slowly I took notice of how the woods around me had a sort of natural order to it. Up until that point, random luck coming out from chaos was what I had clung onto as a reason for why things were as they were. The woods were my Pool of Siloam, I went in blind and came out with my eyes opened to the possibility of a creator.
That seed would then be watered in college only to flourish more than I could ever imagine. A seed of hope was what God provided me, and a flourishing bouquet of faith is what I’ve got in my hands today. And reflecting on it now, had I not opened my eyes, I would not know the fullness and joy of a Catholic life. All praise and glory be to Him!