[LA EN]
In the sacred and liturgical tradition of the early Church, Wednesday of the fourth week of Lent was clothed with immense solemnity and importance, being designated as the day of the great scrutiny for the catechumens who were intensely preparing to receive Baptism at the Easter Vigil. These elect gathered in Rome at the tomb of Saint Paul, the great Apostle and Doctor of the Gentiles, whose own life was marked by a miraculous blindness followed by illumination and conversion, making him the perfect symbol of the transition from the darkness of paganism and sin to the light of the Christian faith. On this significant day, the Church subjected the candidates to a rigorous spiritual examination and performed the age-old ceremony of the "Ephpheta" — the touching rite of the opening of the ears and nostrils, where the priest reproduced the gesture of Christ so that the elect would be fully open to hear the Word of God and to exhale the good odor of the Gospel. It was also at this central moment of their journey that the greatest treasures of the faith were formally delivered to them: the prayer of the Our Father, the profession of faith expressed in the Creed, and the beginning of the four Gospels, thus sealing their theological and ascetical preparation for the regenerating bath of baptismal purification.
📖 Introit (Ez 36, 23-26; Ps 33, 2)
Dum sanctificátus fúero in vobis, congregábo vos de univérsis terris: et effúndam super vos aquam mundam, et mundabímini ab ómnibus inquinaméntis vestris: et dabo vobis spíritum novum. Benedícam Dóminum in omni témpore: semper laus ejus in ore meo. Glória Patri, et Fílio, et Spirítui Sancto. Sicut erat in princípio, et nunc, et semper, et in sǽcula sæculórum. Amen.
When I shall be sanctified in you, I will gather you from all lands; and I will pour upon you clean water, and you shall be cleansed from all your impurities; and I will give you a new spirit. I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall be always in my mouth. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
📖 Reading (Ez 36, 23-28)
Prophet Ezekiel. Thus says the Lord God: I will sanctify my great Name which has been profaned among the nations and which you have dishonored in their midst, so that the peoples may know that I am the Lord, when I shall have been sanctified in you before them. For I will take you from among the nations, gather you from all lands, and bring you into your own country. And I will pour upon you clean water, and you shall be cleansed from all your iniquities; and I will cleanse you from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new Spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my commandments and observe them. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers. You shall be my people and I will be your God, says the Lord Almighty.
📖 Reading (Is 1, 16-19)
Prophet Isaiah. Thus says the Lord God: Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your thoughts from before my eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good. Seek justice, help the oppressed, protect the orphan, defend the widow. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become as white as wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land, says the Lord Almighty.
📖 Gospel (Jn 9, 1-38)
At that time, as Jesus passed by, he saw a man who was blind from birth. And his disciples asked him: Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered: Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him. I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. Having said these things, he spat on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and anointed the eyes of the blind man with it, saying to him: Go and wash in the pool of Siloam (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing. His neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar said: Is not this the man who used to sit and beg? Some said: It is he. Others said: No, but he is like him. He said: I am the man. They said to him then: How were your eyes opened? He answered: The man called Jesus made mud, anointed my eyes and said to me: Go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed and received my sight. They said to him: Where is he? He said: I do not know. They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them: He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see. Some of the Pharisees said: This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath. But others said: How can a man who is a sinner do such signs? And there was a division among them. So they said again to the blind man: What do you say about him, since he has opened your eyes? He said: He is a prophet. The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight. And they asked them: Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see? His parents answered: We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself. His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be the Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said: He is of age; ask him. So for the second time they called the man who had been born blind and said to him: Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner. He answered: Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see. They said to him: What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes? He answered them: I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples? And they reviled him, saying: You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from. The man answered: Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. They answered him: You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us? And they cast him out. Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said: Do you believe in the Son of God? He answered: And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him? Jesus said to him: You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you. He said: Lord, I believe. And he worshiped him.
👁️ The healing of spiritual blindness and baptismal purification
The Gospel of Saint John presents the miracle of the healing of the man born blind not only as a formidable physical prodigy, but as a sublime catechesis on the illumination of the human soul. Saint Augustine, in his Sermon 136, teaches masterfully that this blind man symbolizes all humanity, which lies in the deep darkness of original sin and finds itself absolutely incapable of contemplating the truth by its own means. Christ’s action of mixing his saliva with the dust of the earth points directly to the mystery of the Incarnation, in which the Word became flesh to restore our fallen nature, while the sending to the pool of Siloam splendidly prefigures the life-giving waters of baptism. As Saint Thomas Aquinas underlines in the Summa Theologica (Supplement, Q. 77, Art. 1), the original blindness of this man was not a punishment, but the means mysteriously ordered by divine providence to manifest the glory of God, revealing that the sacraments instituted by Christ operate effectively through sensible and material signs — such as mud and water — in order to elevate our soul from the purely natural state to the supernatural clarity of grace.
This profound theology of interior purification echoes impressively in the prophecies read in this sacred liturgy, which exhort man to decisively abandon the darkness of impenitence. The prophet Ezekiel anticipates the divine promise already sung in the introit of the Mass, announcing the pouring out of clean water capable of removing the heart of stone from the breast and forgiving the most secret idolatries, while Isaiah invites the people to wash and purify themselves, guaranteeing that sins, though red like scarlet, shall become white as snow. Saint Ambrose warns, however, that the divine call to purification often meets violent resistance in human pride, wonderfully portrayed in the dark figure of the Pharisees in the Gospel, who rejected the evidence of the miracle, thus proving that the worst blindness is that of the proud mind which refuses to bow before the truth. To attain the beatific promises of the prophetic readings, the soul needs to embrace the absolute humility of allowing itself to be washed by the hands of the Savior, acknowledging its own insufficiency and cultivating the living faith that truly justifies.
The liturgy of this grand Scrutiny Wednesday therefore achieves a most perfect unity between the promise of restoration prophesied in the Old Testament and its definitive crowning in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. The merciful act of gathering the exiles of the world and sprinkling them with immaculate waters finds its spiritual summit in the pool of Siloam, where the Son of God opens the eyes of the soul that until then lived begging in the shadows of ignorance. By accepting the healing mud that flows from the holy humanity of the Incarnate Word and by obeying the prophetic exhortation to uproot malice from our actions, we are directly challenged to follow the same ascetical itinerary of the healed blind man: to endure the contradictions and contempt of the world in order, finally, to prostrate ourselves in solemn adoration before him who is the inexhaustible Light, the only one capable of leading our steps to the indescribable and eternal clarity of his Kingdom.