Our Gospel on this day, the fifth Sunday of Lent, is again taken from the Gospel according to John. The reading from John continues the break from Cycle A’s focus on the Gospel of Matthew. Today’s Gospel reading recounts another sign, or miracle, found in John’s Gospel, the raising of Lazarus. As our catechumens move closer to the celebration of their Baptisms at the Triduum, today’s reading invites us to reflect upon what it means to call Jesus the Resurrection and the life.

As with last week’s Gospel about the Samaritan woman who encounters Jesus unexpectedly, the key person in today’s reading is met by Jesus. Both are people with needs who progress throughout stages of deepening faith. In this the Fourth Sunday of Lent, a man blind from birth is healed by Jesus, the healing of the man born blind invites us to focus on the physical and spiritual aspects of sight and light. In the first part of today’s Gospel, we hear Jesus’ response to a prevalent belief of his time: that misfortune and disability were the result of sin. That belief is why Jesus is asked the question of whose sin caused the man’s blindness his own or his parents’. Jesus does not answer directly, but instead gives the question an entirely different dimension through this man’s disability, God’s power will be made manifest. Jesus then heals the man.

In today’s Gospel, the dialogue between Jesus and a woman from Samaria is among the most lengthy and most theological found in Scripture. The most startling aspect of the conversation is that it happens at all. Jesus, an observant Jew of that time, was expected to avoid conversation with women in public. The animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans should have prevented the conversation as well. The woman herself alludes to the break from tradition: “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” Yet Jesus not only converses with the woman, he also asks to share her drinking vessel, an action that makes him unclean according to Jewish law.

For the second Sunday of Lent, we move from Jesus’ retreat in the desert to his Transfiguration. Each year on the first Sunday of Lent, our Gospel tells the story of Jesus‘ temptation in the desert. On the second Sunday of Lent each year, we hear the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration.