The Word of God on these Sundays of Lent, is like a Christian’s entire spiritual life: Purification in the pool of Siloam, being born into a new relationship with Christ, seeing Jesus and confessing our belief in Him just like the man born blind from birth: “I believe, Lord.”
There is a beautiful story in today’s gospel which says: “As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents of him, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him”.
Perhaps we are not blind from birth, but we have some flaws. Nobody is perfect in this regard, there are flaws that are noticeable, and there are others that are not noticeable and that are hidden. Things that we dislike and with which we spend our whole lives fighting but Jesus says: “it is so that the works of God might be made visible”. Everything that God allows is good and we have to accept God’s will even when we don’t like it, even when it hurts us, when it makes us cry or when we suffer.
The blind man’s loss of sight led him into begging, he depended on others to live. But one day Jesus passed by and “he spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva and smeared the clay on his eyes.” The Church Fathers, those holy men from the earliest days of our Church, commented on this fact, say that Jesus was reminding us that God, our creator, made us out of clay, and that he as Man is God and that he has the power to heal us physically and spiritually.
Jesus made the mud with saliva and earth, that saliva was part of Jesus, it was part of his body. Likewise, it is because our salvation is in Jesus, in the Incarnate Word, that His blood is precious blood. Saliva as divine medicine for the blind man and the body and blood of a Savior are for us too divine medicine, the best of all medicine, as long as we are in God’s grace!
Christ not only cures physical blindness, but blindness of the soul as well, because there are people who are spiritually blind from birth: they never see the good in life, they do not trust in God, in his mercy and in his promises. They are among those who never confess. They deprive themselves of the great Sacrament of Confession where they would be healed. Our blindness is that we are so obsessed with glamour of evil that we cannot see or celebrate God’s wonderful actions!
Sin not only blinds us spiritually, but it also has physical effects. There are diseases – this was known by St. Paul and is recorded in his First Letter to the Corinthians where he warns of sickness and death resulting from the unworthy reception of the Body and Blood of Christ. Hence the need to confess is clearly seen, that is why Saint Paul invites us in the second reading: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”
Jesus told the blind man, “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam” —which means Sent—. So, he went and washed, and came back able to see. He washed himself in Jesus; this is a sign of baptism, a sign of new life.
This is what the Lord wants from us during this Season of Lent: that by the time we get to Easter we will have experienced an interior change. And hopefully we will all be able to say: I only know one thing, that before I was blind and now I see; that before I was in darkness and now I live in light; that before I did not know Jesus Christ and now I know and love him.
St. Florence Catholic Church 
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