The Deacon's Bench
If you asked me, “who is the most influential Catholic woman in the world right now,” the answer would be easy.
Last week, this 25-year-old Ursuline nun from Sicily, Sister Cristina, appeared on Italy’s version of “The Voice,” the popular singing competition show. If you’ve seen it on NBC, you know how it works. Unknown performers come out and sing for celebrity judges, who have their backs to the stage. It’s known as the “blind audition.” They can’t see who’s singing; all they can go on is the voice. After a few bars, if they like what they hear, they hit a buzzer and the chair spins around and they finally see who’s singing.
Well, on the most recent episode of the show in Italy, Sister Cristina came out, in full habit. No one quite knew what to expect. She launched into the song “No One” by Alicia Keys. Within second, the audience jumped to its feet and began to cheer. The judges were floored by what they heard. The first to spin around was a rapper covered in tattoos named “J-Ax.” When he saw a singing nun, his jaw dropped. He thought it must be a joke. He was incredulous. Then embarrassed. And then moved.
By the end of the segment, he was wiping away tears.
He told her, “If I had met you during Mass when I was a child, now I would be Pope.” And Sister Cristina laughed and said simply, “Well, you have met me now.” At the end of the segment, she ended up choosing J-Ax—the first one who saw who she was— to be her coach as she goes forward in the competition.
In that incredible, unlikely moment, I think, she and that rapper brought alive one of the messages of this Sunday’s gospel.
In the most unexpected places, when you least expect it, light breaks through. God will astonish you. He will make you see what you never imagined. “J-Ax” saw it. At last count, over 36 million people around the world have also seen it, watching this amazing performance on YouTube. It has caused a sensation.
The God who used mud to make a miracle just might use a young nun from Sicily to wow the world—and, in the process, let the world see something new.
My friend Elizabeth Scalia wrote about this earlier in the week and put it this way. “We live in the middle of a great battle between light and dark,” she wrote. And she concluded, “I suspect the Holy Spirit knows what he is about and that the artistic partnership between a nun and a rapper is part of a plan.”
In other words, this is one way to let light shine.
We need it—as a world, and as a people of faith. And we need it at this particular moment in the church calendar. It’s one reason we wear these rose vestments this Sunday. We have turned the corner toward Easter and need to be encouraged that the desert of Lent will eventually burst into bloom. At the end of this tunnel, there is light.
“Live as children of the light,” Paul tells the Ephesians. “Christ will give you light.”
And in the gospel, Jesus says it explicitly: “I am the light of the world.”
If you think about what takes place in this passage, I think what we witness in this gospel is more than just a miracle.
It is nothing less than another Genesis.
Remember the first words attributed to God at the very beginning of scripture:
“Let there be light.”
Light is where it all begins. This is how creation starts, how the universe is made, how the great and unending work of God’s imagination takes off. And in this miracle, Jesus in his own way is repeating his father’s words: let there be light. Let creation begin. Let me help you see what you couldn’t.
He said that to the blind man two thousand years ago.
He says it to each of us today.
Let there be light.
And this gospel cries out: Let there be Christ, the light of the world.
In him, we are given another Genesis.
We began Lent by being told to rend our hearts. Perhaps we need to do that to let in the light. Have we been selfish? Cruel? Merciless? Have we been too comfortable living in the shadows of cynicism and sin?
Maybe we have been reluctant to love, closing off our hearts and allowing them to grow dark.
Lent tells us: rend them. Tear them open.
Let in the light.
Writing about that performance of Sister Cristina, Elizabeth Scalia called her song a kind of psalm. In fact, the lyrics to “No One” speak of a love that no one can stop.
“When the rain is pouring down
And my heart is hurting
You’ll always be around, I know for certain.
No one can get in the way of what I’m feeling
No one, no one can get in the way of what I feel for you.”
Some viewers were shocked by that and thought it was too suggestive. Well, it was suggestive – but not in the way they think. She was suggesting the ultimate love, her love for God. And in the same way, God offers His love to us:
No one can get in the way of what he feels for us.
That is our assurance, our hope. That is our light that never fails.
And if we doubt it, look no further than the cross.
One of the first questions a judge asked Sister Cristina was why she wanted to be on “The Voice.” She replied: “I have a gift to give to you.” The judge then wanted to know what the Vatican thinks of her performance.
“I don’t know,” she said, smiling. ”I’ll wait for the phone call from Pope Francis. Because he invites us to go out, to evangelize, to tell people God doesn’t take anything away [from you], rather he gives us even more!”
To a blind beggar, he gives sight.
To a rapper, he gives insight.
To a world cowering in the dark, he gives light.
In these last weeks of Lent, as we look expectantly to Easter, let us tear open our hearts.
And let there be light.
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