4th Sunday of Lent

In the hymn Amazing Grace, the lyrics in its first stanza almost capture the healing scenario narrated in John 9: 1-41; It was about a blind man who experienced the healing miracle of Jesus.  The lyrics go this way, “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretched like me. I once was lost but now I’m found. Was blind but now I see.” What happened to the blind man was amazing in the sense that first, it happened on a Sabbath and second Jesus was just passing by. For the Pharisees, it is a violation of the sabbath rest to heal someone yet Jesus healed the blind man. For Jesus, He was just passing by yet He stopped to heal the blind man. The blind man neither begged nor approached Jesus to heal him. Nothing on the part of the blind man that made him special over the others to convince Jesus he deserved to be healed. This was indeed an experience of pure grace. Pure grace is to receive the good which one does not actually deserve.

To end, I remember a story of a man who died and was standing before St. Peter. The man told the saint that he deserved to enter heaven because he had a faith larger than a mustard seed. St. Peter said it was not enough. Then the man told St. Peter about his good deeds and all his accomplishments when he was alive on earth. St. Peter said it was not still enough. So the man told the saint that he was a benefactor of the church and he was a defender of faith. St. Peter said it was not still enough. The man was desperate so he said, “If this is the case, only by the grace of God that one can enter heaven!” St. Peter said, “Now that you know, welcome to heaven.”