Today’s readings: 1 Samuel 16, 1.6-7.10-13; Ephesians 5, 8-14; John 9, 1-41.
We all seem to acknowledge that in modern times, science has opened our eyes to realities and phenomena about which humanity in other ages was in the dark. We are all thankful for that. The metaphor of light is linked to the project which in Modernity saw human beings free at last, masters of their own future, emancipated from every possible dependence.
Yet, even this great story of progress has had, and still has, its dark sides. There are tragic moments when the light of modernity soon turned into a moral drama, a crisis of meaning, becoming instead the night of the world.
From our standpoint, as children of the Enlightenment, we may consider passé the question the disciples in today’s gospel asked Jesus on seeing the man born blind: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, for him to have been born blind?”
We tend to be more rational, more matter-of-fact people, less superstitious and much less dependent on religious explanations. Yet even Jesus refuses to argue on this issue with his disciples from within a dark religious framework.
What becomes rather puzzling for us is not the question but the answer Jesus gives: “He was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
This is mostly intriguing to our rational minds because many a time, confronted with the cruel experience of suffering, our light fades and is even darkened.
Our knowing begins to sense how far beyond its grasp is the reality that confronts it. At times we take it too for granted that we stand in the light and are ignorant of possibly, in certain cases, being blinded by the light itself.
Commenting on Rembrandt’s colossal The Blinding of Samson, George Steiner explains how “blinding signifies both the act of blinding and being dazzled or bewildered to the point of blindness”.
Our assumptions very often make it impossible for us to see Jesus. Seeing Jesus is not simply acknowledging that he really existed, that the documentation we have about him is true and authentic or that he must have been a special and remarkable person. Seeing Jesus can only be the outcome of a long journey of growth in the faith.
This long journey is exemplified in today’s gospel through the catechetical narrative of someone existentially peripheral who, from being a motive of disbelief for some, ends up being a revealing sign of God’s power.
The miracle of healing in this case, did not end merely with the opening of the eyes of the man born blind, but with his recognition of Jesus as Lord. It is for sure that John’s narrative was more meant to highlight this latter seeing as interior healing rather than simply the physical healing.
Learning to see Jesus challenges many of our presumptions. Lent is meant to gradually dismantle these presumptions and to make us realise that we can be in darkness at noon. It may sound weird, but from a faith perspective, being ‘enlightened’ may even put us at a disadvantage.
As John O’Donohue writes in Anam Cara, “there are those who are physically blind who have never seen a wave, a stone, a star, a flower. Yet there are others with perfect vision who are absolutely blind.”
This is actually what provoked the violent reaction of the Pharisees when Jesus told them: “I have come into the world so that those without sight may see and those with sight turn blind.” The Pharisees were the ones who knew it all. Whoever knows it all cannot learn. The man born blind instead goes all the way to learn who Jesus really was and encounters him finally in worship.
Commenting on this text, author Stanley Hauerwas remarks that “darkness does not know itself as darkness until it encounters the light”. Science, technological progress, freedom and emancipation are all achievements worth celebrating. Yet they never make the encounter with Jesus superfluous or not worth to be longed for.