Today’s Gospel is a story about blindness, about the inability to see. It begins with the disciples asking Jesus a question that might seem strange to us today: ““Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” At the time it was believed that if a person was born with a deformity or handicap, if one suffered a mishap in life or an illness, or other grave misfortune, it was due to their own sin: God was punishing them. The answer Jesus gives must have been unexpected: “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.” In other words God has permitted this blindness that those with a deeper lack of sight may see. What is it that God desires the “blind” to see?
“…I am the light of the world…” Jesus says. This man was permitted to be born blind, in other words, that God might open the eyes of all to the Truth of His Son. Jesus desired to open the eyes of hearts and souls, to reshape the vision of others that the will of God might be fulfilled, as He says earlier “…this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day,” (John 6:40). And so Jesus does something unusual: He spits on the ground, makes clay from the dust, and smears it on the man’s eyes. We might recall this passage from Sirach: “…all people are of clay, and from the earth humankind was formed…some he blessed and exalted, and some he sanctified and drew to himself. Others he cursed and brought low, and expelled them from their place. Like clay in the hands of a potter, to be molded according to his pleasure, so are people in the hands of their Maker, to be dealt with as he decides…see now all the works of the Most High…” (Sirach 33:10, 12-13, 15).
He tells the man to wash, and he suddenly is able to see. By the end of our Gospel Jesus asks him if he believes in the Son of Man, but the blind man has never seen Him. So the man says, “Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Notice what Jesus says, again in light of the Father’s will that He expressed a few chapters before: “You have seen him, the one speaking with you is he.” This man has seen and believed: “I do believe, Lord,” he says, worshipping Jesus on the spot. Yet this man was just judged by the Pharisees and others, those whose eyes worked well enough to see according to the flesh, but those who follow the Son of God “…walk by faith, not by sight,” (2 Corinthians 5:7). The blind man even tries to help them see the truth, reminding them that if the man who opened his eyes was a sinner, God would not have granted such a miracle. For it was one thing to heal the sight of someone who had gone blind by illness, accident, or bad genetics; in doing so, one was merely restoring what had been lost or broken. But Jesus had done something thought utterly impossible: to give sight to one who had never had it in the first place. In smearing clay on the man’s eyes Jesus is identifying Himself as God, as the Word of God, of which St. John writes, “All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” (John 1:3-5).
Yet the Pharisees refuse to see: in their sin, their pride, they dwell in darkness and will not turn to the light. “If you were blind,” Jesus says, “you would have no sin.” In other words, Jesus knows that they know better; they are not innocent. Remember in the Garden what happened when Adam and Eve ate of the Tree? “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked…” (Genesis 3:7). They went and hid themselves from God; they did not wish to be seen by Him (Genesis 3:8). Sin opens our eyes in one sense, yet blinds us to God; in sin we see what we selfishly desire, often at the expense of seeing what God desires or, more so, at the expense of seeing God Himself. Hence Jesus’ comments to the Pharisees, which conclude by Him saying, “…but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.” In other words “We are innocent; we have no need of our sight being restored”; again, how much is this like Adam and Eve when God asks “Who told you that you were naked?” and instead of admitting their guilt, Adam blames God and the woman, and Eve blames the serpent?
It is as Jesus says in St. Matthew’s Gospel: “The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be,” (Matthew 6:22-23). How sound is the “eye” of our heart? How badly are we in need of Jesus to come and restore our sight? During this season of Lent, when there is so much darkness all around us, let us consider the question of Jesus: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Let us recall how He refashioned us in the waters of our baptism, how He enlightens us and illuminates our minds through His Word, how just as the man went to the Pool of Siloam—which means “sent”—we came, often, to the Mass, which comes from the Latin word “missa” that is often understood to mean “dismisses” or “sent.” Are we blind to sin, the eyes of our heart open to God? For “Blessed are the clean of heart; they shall see God,” (Matthew 5:8).