Sunday Homily, 15 March 2026 - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

In the long aftermath of his healing, the man who’d been born blind testifies to Jesus before he sees him.  And that's how it is with every one of us: we witness to Jesus by what we say and do long before, it seems, we get to see him face-to-face.

That witness precedes sight, that testimony comes before certainty, speaks to us about the minimums needed to become Christian.  It's not necessary that all questions are answered or that all doubts have been dispelled.  We certainly don't have to know everything that can be known.

To take the next step, we need to recognise the truth about ourselves: that our humanity is weak but has an undiminished capacity for greatness.  The truth about ourselves is that we can be strengthened by the Saviour of the world.

A good sign that we are doing well as Christians is that people notice positive changes in us: our humour is cleaner, our recreation improves, our service is felt to be more urgent, and our prayer comes more pleasantly than it once did, even if it is still challenging.

Our family and friends might miss the old version of ourselves.  They might say: “You don’t laugh like you used to.  You don’t want to spend as much time with us.”  And if that’s true because of Christ’s illumination, then you can be sure things are going in a good direction.  If there’s new distance in older relationships because of Christ, I hope that you’ll find a deeper connection and stronger fellowship among us.  We together know and understand what’s happening to us, even if others don’t appreciate it.

When positive change is noticed to us, that’s the time for us to speak a little about Jesus.  The man who had been born blind had it right: what he said about Jesus was factual and short.

And so it must be with us: when we speak about Jesus, we keep it factual and short, because we’re saying all that we truly know about the mystery of divine life working in us.  The man who had been born blind knows that Jesus healed him, even if he couldn't pick him out of the crowd at first.  You and I know that the same Lord is working on us, even if we have yet to see him with our natural eyes.

In those crucial moments when we speak up, we’ll be saying that Jesus is saving us.  We’ll find our own way of saying that Jesus is changing our desires to be more in keeping with his own.  We're not perfected yet, but we have improved; and this is his doing.  We may speak clumsily or cleverly, but all witness to Jesus can be effective if it is sincere.  Our sincerity and wholeheartedness about Jesus oppose the hypocrisy and duplicity about the place.

The point is not to look good: you are worth infinitely more than your reputation.  The point is to make Jesus known.  And you might be the only Christian your neighbour knows, such are the times we live in.

We, each of us, have inherited the blindness which goes with our humanity.  Our first parents lost sight of God for us all.  But little-by-little, God makes himself known to us.  Bit-by-bit, God changes those he acquaints with himself.  One-by-one, darkened eyes receive unfading light.

Fr Paul Rowse, OP

Parish Priest