The gospels give us more than one story about Jesus restoring sight to a
blind person, but the one we just heard is different from the others.
It’s a story, not about Jesus restoring sight, but about giving sight to
someone who never saw in the first place, a man blind from birth.
It’s a powerful story and a long one but,
however long, it leaves some things unsaid. For instance, it doesn’t say
a thing about what it was like for this man when he first opened his
eyes. It must have been dazzling but confusing, too, because he would
have had absolutely no point of reference - no idea, for instance, what
light or color were; no idea what people looked like, or trees, or
water, or flowers, or the sky. Then in a flash, he was surrounded by an
infinity of newness.
But we hear nothing of this because it’s not
the concern of the gospel writer nor is it the point of the story.
Remember, we are in John’s gospel, the gospel of signs and symbols. That
should tip us off to the fact that we are dealing here with a physical
miracle, yes, but with far more than that. In John’s gospel, miracles
are always signs that point beyond themselves, so we have to dig a bit,
we have to get below and beyond the appearances of things because in
John’s gospel, if you’ll pardon the pun, there is always more than meets
the eye.
And what is that “more” in this story?
It’s a kind of seeing that is deeper by far than mere physical sight.
This story is not so much about the glorious things we see with these
eyes as it is about the far more glorious things that we see with the
eyes of faith. It’s about a man getting his eyes opened, yes, but the
really important eyes that get opened here are the eyes of faith. That’s
why the Church gives us this story during Lent. Lent is the Church’s
prime time for growing in faith. Lent is meant to be eye-opening time
for the Church, and especially for those who are preparing for baptism
at Easter. What better time, then, to hear this story? What better time
to reflect on faith and on what it means to us, and where it can take
us? What better time to come to terms with what a gift faith is and, at
the same time, to acknowledge how weak and fragile and shaky our faith
can sometimes be!
I often find myself wondering how people
without faith make it in life. Maybe you do, too. I know people who
would really like to believe, who have been searching for years - even
coming to church - but they’ve never been able to make the leap of
faith. And I wonder why. Why do I have faith and they don’t? I honestly
don’t know. All I do know is that faith is a gift, and that gifts are
always mysterious and never deserved. I also know that even those of us
who are blessed with faith have to struggle with it at times. A favorite
prayer of mine from the gospels is the simple one a father made to Jesus
when he desperately wanted him to cure his son: “I believe, Lord, help
my unbelief!” Do you relate to that? I think we all do.
I recall a conversation I had years ago with
Ulrich Henn, the German sculptor who created our bronze doors and the
tabernacle in the Blessed Sacrament chapel. He was telling me a door
handle he was planning to make for one of the bronze doors out there,
how he wanted it to tell the gospel story of Peter walking on the water
toward Jesus and then starting to sink. When I asked him why that story,
he told me, “people who come here may believe, but not always very well,
and they need to know that Jesus will be there to pull them out of the
water just as he did Peter.” “I believe, Lord, help my unbelief!”
Today’s gospel shows that faith is even more a
process than it is a possession. Faith is not a neatly packaged set of
beliefs, a portable catechism we carry around with carefully crafted
answers to every possible question. No, faith is a pair of eyes: a way
of looking at life, a way of knowing, a way of living. And faith is not
a stagnant thing, it’s a growing thing.
We know that from today’s gospel. The blind man
comes to faith only in stages. Only gradually does he come to recognize
who Jesus was, only gradually does he come to actually put his faith in
Jesus. This is clear from the way the story unfolds. When the
authorities first question him about how he got his sight, he tells them
it was from “the man called Jesus.” There’s a certain distance in that
language, isn’t there? A little detachment. Then, as they continue to
grill him, he refers to Jesus as “a prophet”, and “a man from God,” (and
there are stirrings of faith there, for sure). Later, when Jesus finds
him and engages him in conversation, he expresses belief in Jesus as
“the Son of Man” (that’s getting closer because it’s a biblical title
with divine overtones), and then finally, in an act of profound faith he
calls Jesus “Lord,” and he worships him.
Quite a trek that was - from “the man called
Jesus” to “Lord.” No wonder we speak of faith as a journey!
My friends, the blind man’s path to faith
should give hope to all of us who are on a similar path - all of us who
believe, but not always very well, all of us who have our blind spots.
And we can draw even more hope from today’s reading from the Book of
Samuel where we were reminded that all this is not just about what we
see but about what God sees. God sees in ways we humans don’t, and
can’t. The God who saw promise in the young shepherd boy, David, sees
promise in us, too, no matter how unpromising we may feel. That’s
because God “looks into the heart” and we see only the appearances. May
this Eucharist we are celebrating open our eyes to the God who looks
into the heart – looks into our heart - and loves what he sees!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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