Sunday 4 Lent (B-2006)

The Scrutinies: From Darkness to Light

John 9

There are three very special groups of people here today for whom our parish community ought to be praying throughout Lent.

First, we have four non-Christian candidates for Baptism at Easter; second, we have seven non-Catholic Christian candidates for full communion with the Catholic Church at Easter; and third, we have three Catholics who will receive Confirmation at Easter.

We recognize their presence among us with the great Christian joy of this “Laetare” Sunday; we assure them that we will pray especially for them at this time, above all today; and we offer them our Christian love, fellowship and support.

Of these three groups, there is one which requires our most special attention today: our four candidates for Baptism (Victoria Gonzalez, Susan Lin, David McAuley and Rivon Shaneufelt).

They have been preparing hard over recent months through prayer, study and the moral effort to change their lives in a sincere show of repentance so that they will be the better ready for the great and powerful sacrament of Baptism.

Baptism is known as the door of the sacraments, the washing of regeneration, illumination, the seal of God, the sacrament of the Trinity, and so on.

Our candidates know, then, that it is no empty ritual. They have understood that Baptism plunges them into Jesus Christ, not just as the divine individual, but as the whole Christ, Head and Members, of the Mystical Body, which is also called the Catholic Church.

They have grasped that to enter this Body is not something to be taken lightly, but requires on their part a complete rejection of any attachment to evil in their lives.

They say this strong, firm and total “no” for one reason only: that they might say an even stronger, firmer and total “yes” to the redeeming grace, to the gospel truth and to the faithful discipleship of Jesus Christ in the midst of his one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

To help them on their way to this new birth, the Church, from the very beginning, established certain moments of examination for those who have been accepted for baptism after infancy.

We call these non-infants “the elect.” And we call those moments of examination, “the scrutinies.”

Because the shift away from one life to another, that is, from a life without Christ to life in Christ, is a process, these moments of examination are necessary so that the Church can be sure that the elect are making progress towards the kind of lifestyle they must embrace if they are to be Christians.

We should not see the scrutinies as a source of embarrassment, but as signs of the loving care that Mother Church takes to prepare her future children.

The scrutinies are also a witness to the fact that the Church is the guardian of the sacraments. These must neither be given nor received lightly.

The scrutinies show that the Church takes the spiritual struggle of the elect seriously and assures them of the loving and prayer-filled support of the whole community.

Today we celebrate the second of three scrutinies for our elect.

The progress from the first to the third scrutiny is intended to ensure that the elect perceive ever more clearly the nature of sin and of its presence in their lives, and so gradually increase their desire for salvation.

 The scrutinies, then, are not so much a test of the intellectual knowledge that the elect have of the faith, but of their spiritual growth, of their deepening awareness of the darkness of sin and of the light of salvation.

In the early Church, during the scrutinies, the elect would stand almost naked facing the West with their hands raised in an act of rejection, while they would blow away symbolically the power of darkness.

Only at the moment of baptism, would they turn to the East and welcome the rising sun, the light of the Risen Christ, and breathe in the Holy Spirit which the risen Jesus breathed out on his Apostles.

In the rite of the scrutiny which we will celebrate shortly, this notion of rejecting the darkness is symbolized by a rite of exorcism.

Now exorcism must not be understood here as what you might have seen in the cinema. We are not talking about demonic possession.

Exorcism is a general category of which there are numerous special types.

The ones performed in preparation for baptism are not aimed at getting rid of the person of the Devil or of other demons from within the souls of the elect.

In the document in which the Church explains the meaning of the scrutinies, it says the following about the exorcism:

“In the rite of exorcism, the elect, who have already learned from the Church as their mother the mystery of deliverance from sin by Christ, are freed from the effects of sin and from the influence of the devil.  They receive new strength in the midst of their spiritual journey and they open their hearts to receive the gifts of the Savior.”

The exorcism, then, is a prayer to free the elect from the external influence of the Devil upon them; to lessen the effects of sin; and to strengthen them spiritually in view of the Baptism they are yet to receive.

The exorcism does not, however, free them from original sin or from any personal sin they have committed. That will be done by Baptism itself.

Once they are baptized, any future personal sins they might commit will ordinarily be forgiven by the sacrament of confession. Confession restores the grace of Baptism.

Exorcism in this context is like a burst of light which originates from Christ in the heart of the Church and reaches out to the souls of the elect, still in the darkness, and is an encouragement which gives them the hope of coming to the full light in the Church.

If the exorcism is a chasing away of the Spirit of evil, the next gesture of the priest seeks to reassure the elect that the Spirit of God will come.

It is the gesture of the laying on of hands.

This, too, is an ancient and very solemn symbol of election and empowerment.

The Holy Spirit will not come to reside in the elect in an unfailing way until Baptism and Confirmation are given.

In the laying on of hands, we are asking Him to guide the elect from, as it were, the outside so that their steps will not falter on the way to Baptism.

During the scrutiny rite we will have ample opportunity to pray in a very concentrated way for our four friends, both aloud and in silence. Your prayer is an essential part of the rite, because prayer opens us all together to the power of the Spirit so that, so to speak, He can come to the help of our four friends from the many different directions of our hearts.

Prayer directs our own love and the Spirit’s love in a powerful synthesis towards the hearts of these friends and thus “storms” them with that love.

So, during this rite, I ask you to try and put aside all other intentions and distractions so that the elect may truly feel the strength of your loving support.

Before we begin, I want to say a few words directly to Victoria, Susan, David and Rivon.

The blind man in today’s Gospel is each of you, just as he was once each of us.

You, as we, were born into the blindness of original sin.

Jesus saw you and did not walk you by, for he was sent to open the eyes of the blind.

He did so, not in a pool of water, but in the fountains of living water pouring forth from his wounded heart.

He has seen your struggle with evil, with the powerful influence of the proud world which threatens to expel you if you really proclaim publicly your belief in him.

He sees the subtle controls upon you coming from human respect, be it in society or even, perhaps, in you own family.

And he rejoices that you have chosen him without fear above all others and all else. He rejoices that the world expels you for thus believing in him.

And so he comes to you, he seeks you out and he asks you, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

And you bow down before him and, filled with light, say those simple words, those words which are more radical than the big bang because they open up to you a whole new universe of life and love and truth and holiness and justice and eternity: those words are, “I believe in you, my Jesus, my Lord and my God.”

 And do not think for a minute that in seeing all this happen to you, the rest of us here are all anonymous and indifferent spectators!

Let it never be said and let it never be so!

For all of us, especially those of us baptized before we even knew it, your journey of faith and humility is a source of challenge, of hope and of repentance.

For in seeing you, we see ourselves, unless we are still blind.

In sharing in this scrutiny with you, we are challenged to scrutinize our own hearts and souls as to the sincerity and authenticity of our baptismal commitment.

In seeing you, we see the hope of the Church and we also see hope that we ourselves can again stand up to the evil around and within us and experience liberation from it in the sacraments of confession and of the Eucharist.

In seeing you, we can beseech the Lord to cause to well up again inside us the graces of Baptism and Confirmation and of the sacraments of Matrimony and of priestly Ordination.

In seeing you, we can repent of our mediocrity and half-heartedness and turn back to the simple, straightforward Catholic zeal of our earlier years.

In seeing you, we can hope again for the illumination of our souls in the heart of Mother Church and, together with you, shine forth into the outside darkness like some great lighthouse which gives new encouragement, new energy and a sense of direction to those lost at sea.

Lord Jesus,

enlighten the long shadows of our weary hearts

with the bright morning star of your merciful love!

Exorcize us of our easy compromises

with the deceitful suggestions of evil!

Lay your almighty and tender hands

upon our aching heads

and fill our very guts with your consolation and peace!

Bathe us in the beauty of the celestial light

pouring forth from your side!

Revive us,

renew us and

ready us

for the mission of evangelization

and for the coming of your Kingdom of eternal Glory.

Amen!