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The Power of One Truth
March 1-2, 2008
John 9:1-41
My mother is not a highly educated woman, at least not in the academic sense. She was raised as a child on a farm in Poland, and her life was seriously disrupted by the Second World War. She never went to college, and when she came to the United States after the war, she had to learn English as her second language. Through all of those challenges of life, her faith was her foundation. It was both strong and traditional. I know that my own faith comes from her. But there was one period in the 1970’s when her faith was substantially shaken. It was during the period in which the reforms of the Second Vatican Council were being implemented. My mother always saw her faith as a rock foundation, as an immovable and unchangeable truth. But it seemed to her, during the implementation of the Second Vatican Council, that everything was changing, everything was up for grabs. So, since I was in the seminary, one day she said, “George, we need to talk.” It was unusual for my mother to arrange such a discussion, so I knew it was important. As we sat down to talk, she began. “Now,” she said, “you mean to tell me that from now on we can eat meat on Fridays?” “Yes,” I said, “Mom, except for the Fridays of Lent, you can eat meat.” “But I don’t understand,” she said. “When I was growing up, the priest told us from the pulpit that, if you ate meat on Friday, even a single sausage, you would go straight to hell.” “He might have said that, Mom, but no meat on Fridays is directive of the church, and it is one which has now been changed.” She shook her head. “And you mean to tell me now that we can receive the bread of the Eucharist in our hands?” “Yes, Mom, you can do that now.” “I don’t understand,” she said. “The priest would tell us that we were never able to touch the Eucharist. When he placed it in our mouth, we had to be careful lest it touch our teeth. If it did, we would go straight to hell.” “Well, he might have said that, Mom, but receiving in your hand was the original practice, and it’s the one that we are returning to now.” Again she shook her head. I could tell that these changes were hard on my mother. But since this was such a rare discussion, I thought I might bring up some of the other changes that the Vatican Council was implementing. I knew that Poland had a rather sad tradition of anti-Semitism, so I said, “You know, Mom, one of the other things that was clarified at the Second Vatican Council is that we as Catholics no longer believe that the Jewish people are cut off from God. We don’t believe that they are going to hell.” She looked at me and she said, “I never believed that!” This surprised me, so I said, “Didn’t the priest tell you as you were growing up that the Jews were going to hell?” “All the time,” she said, “at least once a month. But I didn’t believe it.” Now I was confused. I said, “Look, you listened to the priest when he said you couldn’t eat meat on Friday. You listened to the priest when he said you couldn’t touch the host. Why didn’t you listen to the priest when he said that the Jews were going to hell?” She thought for a moment. “Well,” she said, “we lived with them. They were our neighbors. I remember once when my mother, your grandmother, was very sick. We thought she was going to die. The Jewish woman down the street visited one day and brought a pot of chicken soup. She said to your grandmother, ‘Mrs. Buczkowski, this recipe for chicken soup has been in my family for generations. I tell you, if you take some twice a day, you will recover.’ So your grandmother did that, and within two weeks she was back again working out in the fields. From that time forward, whenever your grandmother ran into that Jewish woman, she would say to her friends, ‘Look, here’s the woman who saved my life.’ That’s, George, why I never believed that the Jews were going to hell—because of the chicken soup.” Now there are many times in life where we become overwhelmed, overwhelmed and confused. There are times where it’s not clear to us what we should do. We very seldom get the whole picture or see every truth. But if one truth is clear, and if we hold on to that truth, we believe that God will use that truth to lead us to where we need to be. This is what happened to the man born blind in today’s gospel. He was overwhelmed with the tremendous miracle of sight. He had been blind from birth. And yet from the moment that he began to see, people tried to convince him who Jesus was: that he was a sinner, that he didn’t observe the Sabbath. It was difficult for the man born blind to assess the truth of these statements made by people who were much more educated and had much more authority than he did. But he knew one thing, and he held fast to the thing that he knew. As he says in the gospel, “I know one thing. I was blind, and now I see.” And because he held on to that one simple truth, God led him to all truth. God led him to accept Jesus as his Lord. The same is true for us. There are times when life overwhelms us, when it is not clear what we should decide, what we should do. But if we are given one truth, one clear truth, and if we hold on to that truth, we believe that God will lead us to where we need to be. It is like the alcoholic who understands his life is falling apart. Nothing is working in his job, in his family, in his relationships, in his view of himself. But he knows one thing: unless I stop drinking, I will die. As long as he holds on to that one truth, he can find salvation. It is like a woman in an abusive relationship, conflicted in what she should do, conflicted over her self-image, her responsibility, her commitment. But she knows one truth, the truth that unless she leaves that relationship, her children will suffer. If she holds on to that truth, she can move forward. It is like many people who are devastated by the loss of someone they love, who are overwhelmed with grief, whose life is turned upside down. They become paralyzed. But if they can hold on to one truth, that there are still people in their lives who love them and who will be with them, that one truth can allow life to begin again. It is like all of us who deal with the many demands of life, with the demands that come from our work, from our family, from our education, from our service. We become confused about what to do next. Yet, if we can hold on to one truth: that we must find time to invest in our relationships, to spend time with our children, with our friends. If we hold on to that truth, that one truth will lead us to where we need to be. Life frequently overwhelms us. We do not see the whole picture. Not everything is clear. But if we have clarity in one truth that we can see, and if we hold on to that truth, we believe that God will take care of the rest. That truth might be an act of kindness with chicken soup or a remarkable miracle that replaces blindness with sight. But whatever our truth is, we believe that God will use what is clear to lead us through what is unclear. We believe that God will use the little that we know to lead us to life.
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