This fourth Sunday of Lent, known as “Laetare Sunday,” is a day of rejoicing, expressing the joy of the Church in anticipation of the Resurrection of our Lord.

Today’s readings remind us that it is God who both gives us proper vision in body as well as in soul and instructs us to be constantly on our guard against spiritual blindness.

We have the responsibility as children of God “to live as children of the light, producing every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth.”

In the Gospel narrative, the most unlikely person, namely, the beggar born blind, receives the light of Faith in Jesus, while the religion-oriented, law-educated Pharisees remain spiritually blind.

To live as a Christian is to see and to grow continually, gaining a clearer vision of God, of ourselves, and of others. Our Lenten prayers and sacrifices should help to heal our spiritual blindness so that we can look at others, see them as children of God and love them as our own brothers and sisters, saved by the death and Resurrection of Jesus.

We all have blind spots — in our marriages, our parenting, our work habits, and our personalities. We are often blind to the presence of the Triune God dwelling within us and fail to appreciate His presence in others. Even practicing Christians can be blind to the poverty, injustice, and pain around them. Let us remember that Jesus wants to heal our blindness.

We need to ask Him to remove from us the root causes of our blindness: self-centeredness, greed, anger, hatred, prejudice, jealousy, addiction to evil habits, hardness of heart and the like.

With His grace, we experience Jesus’s dwelling within us and within others, through personal prayer, meditative reading of the Bible and a genuine sacramental life.

Meanwhile, there are still a few informal settler families in Dampalit, Malabon, hoping and praying that they would benefit from the continuing projects of Mayor Jeannie Sandoval, intended to ease the lives of her constituents.

I hope Mayor Sandoval could find time to render assistance to the homeless families who, for quite some time, have been living particularly on Damzon Street, Barangay Dampalit.

I believe the housing projects are part of a broader effort to mitigate risks from flooding and climate change. I hope Mayor Sandoval is prioritizing these projects and relocating hundreds of families like those at Dampalit from danger zones because most of them are living along waterways.

God warns us that those who assume that they see the truth are often blind, while those who acknowledge their blindness are given clear vision.