Spring is on the way that will, God willing, become summer. In my former home I had the benefit of a seasonal garden with different things in bloom at different times of the year. I wonder how the many daffodil and bluebell bulbs planted there will be getting into full swing. I also loved seeing the buds on the cherry trees thickening. Seeing nature wakening from its sleep was and is magical, almost supernatural. In these ways we glimpse the perfection of God which he intends for the whole of his creation not just in the seasons but forever. And yet everything in our world and cosmos is effected by something called entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. This is where, over time, there is a tendency in nature for everything to lose order and cohesion; eventually flowers fade, galaxies and stars decay, and we become older; we die. And yet we are more than cells and atoms. It seems to me that every human being since the dawn of time senses this, including people who do not believe in God, who still have a sense of something greater than themselves. At our conception in the womb we take on the image and likeness of God in our souls. At our baptism the Spirit of the living and eternal God is given to us. God pours into us more of his very self in the other sacraments. In the Eucharist we become one with Jesus; at Confirmation we all receive the Holy Spirit, as priests and deacons do again in a particular way at their ordination. Think about it, we are nothing less than the temple of the Holy Spirit. Amazingly, beautifully, by God’s gift, each and every one of us has living within us the living and eternal God. God is not effected by time, is immortal, cannot be killed, and does not decay. What we are called to do is to nurture this divine life in our souls, to turn a spark into a flame by our lives, a flame that lights the way to eternal life. Concerning this Sunday's gospel, at the time of Jesus the Pharisees too had a sense of the eternal destiny of humanity, they believed in the resurrection from the dead but they were unsure what this meant in practical terms. The other main Jewish sect, the Sadducees, did not hold this belief. We see that Martha, Lazarus’ sister, was a Pharisee as she believes in the resurrection. In the gospel, in a few short phrases, Martha also has a journey of faith from Jesus being a person being favoured by God; to Jesus being much more, the Christ (the anointed one), the Son of God, the Messiah, the long awaited saviour. As well as in Sunday's gospel elsewhere we see also Jesus raising others from the dead. As in other traditions, Jewish funerals are big events. In Sunday's gospel the people at the tomb argue about Jesus, why he is there and whether he could have prevented the death in the first place. You can imagine how it’s all very public and must have been deeply upsetting for Martha who, despite everything, keeps faith with Jesus and does what he says, though we see that she doesn’t really know what Jesus is going to do. Take a moment to imagine seeing her brother Lazarus emerging from the tomb, how would you have responded, joy, fear, perhaps both. What would you say to Lazarus? What would you say to Jesus? And yet there more is to come. Sunday's events, stupendous though they are, point towards something far greater. Even though Lazarus was raised from the dead yet he was still mortal – effected by entropy, eventually Lazarus dies again. In a couple of weeks we will hear of another death, this time a very public and humiliating event, the death of Jesus in unimaginable pain and suffering. Again people will think that it is all over; those who hate him rejoice and those who love him hide in grief and fear. But Jesus does not need anyone to roll away the stone from his tomb, he breaks the chain of death and decay; he is the same human Jesus yet he is somehow different, the difference of a radiant immortality, a radiant sense of peace, an offer to all of us of a life without fear. A life of eternal joy and love. Already he stretches out his wounded hand to hold ours in forgiveness, love and tenderness. We all have the seeds of divinity and immortality planted within us; the spring time of our souls is nearly here. I hope and pray that Lent is going well for you. God bless and keep you all. Fr Chris

Have you even taken a moment to reflect on the many things in life we take for granted as human beings? We have built into us an astonishing, even miraculous, range of abilities and skills. Other species in the created world have only part of what we are able to do. We are the only species on our planet, and as far as we know the cosmos, with our level of consciousness. The potential of our abilities seems to expand exponentially, they can put someone on the moon, but there is a shadow side which can take us to the verge of annihilation. When we at our best the greatness of humanity and its gifts is a reflection of the wonder and greatness of God, at our worst we imitate the devil. One of our amazing abilities that many of us have is sight. Think about it for a moment, most of us see in colour, we see in three dimensions, our eyesight adapts to light or dark. The eye itself is an extraordinary construction directly connected to our even more incredible brain. We feel uncomfortable when our sight deteriorates. For those with sight we find the prospect of blindness terrifying. Some of us of us are born without sight as the man in this Sunday's gospel. At the time of Jesus any type of disability was the result of sin on the part of the person, the parents and even ancestors. Jewish law promoted the welfare of widows and orphans but because of the idea of sin, not disabled people. Disability was a punishment meted out by God. Appalling really. Just before Sunday’s reading Jesus tells His followers that this is not true. Jesus’ response is not to start speculating about rights or wrongs but of helping a person in need, in this case a person who is not asking for help but who Jesus just notices. There’s only one problem with this, it’s the Jewish Sabbath. In Jesus’ time the Sabbath was strictly observed. There were, and are, 39 forms of work which are forbidden on the Sabbath in Judaism. Healing was one, as was kneading, which is how Jesus creates the paste. Jesus as an observant Jew would have known this. Perhaps it’s not that He does not care about the Sabbath but he wants to help, to give a gift to someone in need that will transform their lives; the gift of sight, not just of the eyes but also to open the eyes of the heart. We see how the man receives his sight but also receives the gift of faith. As his sight returns his understanding of Jesus develops too from “he”, to “prophet” to “Lord” to the worship of God in the person of Jesus. For the Pharisees, in a sense they just blunder around in their interior darkness. They just see rules being broken and they cannot make up their mind what is going on. This is surprising as they would have known that opening the eyes of the blind was, in scripture, a sign of the dawn of the age of the Messiah and the coming of the kingdom of God. Their blindness is their confusion, but their blindness is not particularly terrifying to them, the more they debate the more blind they become. They are ok with generating a lot of heat but no light. Where are your blind spots (we all have them)? There are times in our lives when we sit and wait for the Saviour. Times of doubt, times of illness, times of anxiety, times of rejection, times when we do not know where to turn? In our hearts there are times when we sit and wait for Jesus and, in our souls, beg for his presence. There is no need to beg, as with the man today Jesus notices us and, more than this, He looks for us. He always wants to heal us, He wants to shelter our battered and bruised heart in His. Lent is a sacred time to come to Him, particularly in the sacrament of reconciliation, to receive the beauty of His healing grace, where we too can say “Lord, I believe”. Whatever happens in our lives we are always in the light of the Lord. I hope and pray that Lent is going well for you. God bless and keep you all. Fr Chris