A homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent — Laetare Sunday, March 15, 2026
1 Samuel 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a, Ephesians 5:8-14, John 9:1-41
This may end up being more cliché than creative, more borrowed than original, but it’s nonetheless heartfelt and sincere.
Let’s consider candles for a moment.
Candles come in all shapes and sizes, from tea lights and tapers to Muppet heads and madonnas. Some are designed to light a room; others, to infuse a scent.
The wicks-in-wax we know as candles have been traced back 2,500 years, and their forebears go back another 2,500.
As this winter winds down (don’t jinx it, Bill!), we remember stocking up on candles and flashlights in case the storms knocked out power. Even after 5,000 years, we rely on candles as our No. 1 source of emergency illumination. So that we don’t curse the dark.
As long as we don’t burn down the house.
And when it’s pitch-dark, and we’re lost or frightened or both, even the tiniest flame from a candle that once lit a birthday cake can be enough to reassure us and lead us home.
Literally.
Figuratively.
Spiritually.
All three of our readings from Scripture today deal with being able to see, and through sight, to understand. We know that sight is nigh on impossible without light, even if we’re 20/20 or better. So, really, today we’re considering sources of light.
Thus, candles.
We light the wick of a candle, which centers the candle’s flaming light, but it’s the body of the candle that melts into fuel to feed the fire. The candle body can be made from 100 percent purely natural materials such as beeswax or soy, or maybe we’re living better through chemistry with paraffin and similar substances.
Let’s tuck that information into the metaphor box for a moment.
The fuel — the wax — of a candle is finite, so to stay in the light, we have to keep an eye on how far down the candle has burned, and we have to make sure we have a stockpile of replacement candles.
Which brings us to the best part of candles. Every candle’s flame can light another, or potentially billions, without itself going out. (That’s one of the borrowed clichés I mentioned. It’s cliché because it’s true.)
One of those candles may be the original’s replacement, its successor, the bigger, better and brighter candle that surpasses the one that came before it.
Some of those candles together can light a room or a building where only a corner had been illuminated before, and only dimly.
All of those candles together can enlighten the world.
We can be candles.
If the fire within us is ignited, that fire comes from the Light of Christ.
It’s our duty and our challenge to spread that fire and light, to protect our flames from literal, figurative and spiritual wind and rain, and to renew our wicks and fuel — again, literal, figurative and spiritual — as long as we live. And then, to pass our specific flame and light, which represent all our God-given talents and skills and insights, to a suitable successor.
For hundreds of years, maybe thousands, the purest physical candles have been made of beeswax. There’s even a chant at the Easter Vigil Mass that praises the work of bees.
And for hundreds of years — or, at least since I was a kid — people have said that some things “are none of your beeswax,” meaning stay out of my life and my business.
But as followers of the Light of Christ, our beeswax … uh, our business, is the welfare of every child of God. So, we follow and share the flame at the heart of the Light of Christ.
We spread the Good News through words and actions of charity and justice.
Especially when times seem as dark as they can these days.
