LENT IV (A)

One thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see. – John 9: 25

   One thing we can expect in John’s Gospel is lots of double entendre. This episode does not merely concern this man’s physical sight, but his spiritual sight as well. His physical blindness is a symbol of the universal spiritual opaqueness we all share due to original sin. Since the first day of creation to the present, God’s work has been to bring light out of darkness. What happened to this man is just an example of His continuing work.

   Creation, you see, is a work in progress, so our Lord is just activating this man’s latent but underdeveloped spiritual insight. He becomes a witness not only to what happened to him on a physical level, but also he eventually witnesses to the spiritual truth about the one who opened his eyes. He does not become a different person, merely the same person with a different consciousness.

   Ironically, it is the Pharisees’ cross-examination of him that forces him, like the woman at the well in last Sunday’s Gospel, to the realization that Jesus is not only a prophet but the Messiah. Actually, the man born blind is a disciple-in-the-making, & the more they question him, the more like a disciple he becomes.

   What is a marvel is the Pharisees’ refusal to see the obvious. They are using their minds to deny the truth. How very much like them we really are! In this mislabeled “Age of Reason” in which humanity has supposedly “come of age,” we’ve merely substituted a different set of blinders to keep us from seeing the truth about Jesus. Our arrogance is no less prominent than that of the Pharisees. Original sin involves a stubborn attachment to a darkened understanding of God, creation, & Jesus, & then calling this benighted consciousness light. We too, like the Pharisees of old, call blindness sight & mistake ignorance for truth.

   Divine reality is not separate from creation but interpenetrates it & energizes it. Like the man born blind, we too must learn to see the spiritual in & through the material, perceiving the infinite grounding of the finite world, sensing the Eternal Now in the flux of temporal events. This is not belief in the God-world connection: it is consciousness of it.

   In traditional language, faith seeks understanding. What we inherit from the past & hold as a conviction urges us to explore it. Faith is not an end, but an invitation to understanding which means more than internal consistency & a compatibility with other truths: it means an awareness of the God-world connection. So by its very nature, faith points us toward the task of spiritual development.

   This task, however, often proves to be difficult, & the call for a blind faith may be fueled by a sense that spiritual insight is too far beyond us. The whole point of the incarnation is to rid us of that timidity, & help us to see what we could not before. Becoming aware of the divine dimension of things may happen suddenly or gradually. Whichever it may be, the important thing is that we become aware deep within us of this dimension, & that God is not indifferent to our fate.  AMEN!