That I may see

Today’s gospel (Luke 18: 35-43) needs hardly any commentary but, like all gospel passages it can be the source of endless reflection. A blind man, hearing of the approach of Jesus the Nazarene, calls for mercy, despite the scolding of his unpleasant neighbours who, one suspects, were clamouring for their own piece of Jesus’ attention. When Jesus responds to him (for He had always been able to hear him), He asks what the man desires. When the man asks for the restoration of his sight, Jesus grants him this blessing instantly. And his neighbours – who moments ago were trying to shut him up – now praise God in their amazement (and no doubt clamour all the more for their own needs).

We sometimes think of such healings only in their positive sense; the outcome of a journey of suffering that now gives way to joy with the healing touch of Jesus. But mark again the man’s words: ‘let me see again’.   This man had been able to see once. That was before he lost that quasi-miraculous sense by which the wide world around us crowds into our tiny heads in visions that fill our minds - sometimes of beauty and wonder, and sometimes of horror and fright. We do not know how he lost his sight, but as with all physical ailments that Jesus cures, we know there is also a spiritual sense to the affliction. Just as leprosy apes sin because it causes loss of feeling and disfigurement, so blindness apes our spiritual condition when we lose the insights that come through Revelation, spiritual vision, and human wisdom.

Spiritual blindness may come from many sources. Sometimes God allows us to walk in darkness because He is inviting us to put a greater trust in Him. Often enough, however, spiritual blindness comes from our refusal to see things as they are. Just as we should surrender to the Father’s forming action, we must take stock of things as God’s action allows them to be, and not as we wished they were.

I wonder if there are two dangers for us here: first, that we are sometimes so confident in our ‘insights’ that we miss the truth of things; and second, that we are so frightened by what we see that we prefer to stick our heads in the ground. The first is blindness through pride; the second is blindness through wishful thinking.

In both instances, what we need is the healing word of Jesus, either to remind us of our dependence on Him (and so to ratchet down our self-sufficient attempts at wisdom), or to encourage us to look at reality and speak as we find it (and so to fill our wills with the resolve He designed us to live by).

May Jesus grant us all the humility to depend on His sight, and the courage to speak the truth He gives us to see.

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Please remember Brian and Lizzie in your prayers today on their thirteenth wedding anniversary. 

Today is also the anniversary of the beatification of some of the Mexican Martyrs. Viva Cristo rey!