In today’s gospel from John 9:1-41, we have another story about healing and conversion. The action focuses on a man blind from birth who, after an encounter with Jesus, can see. Like the Samaritan woman at the well, the blind man was an unlikely candidate for a meaningful role in his society. Until he met Jesus, all he could do was "sit and beg." Only Jesus saw the potential for “the works of God” to “be made visible through him.”
The drama of this story occurs after the healing miracle takes place. Unlike the experience of the Samaritan woman at the well, whose town welcomed Jesus based on her testimony, the healed man becomes more of an outcast than he was before he met Jesus and received the gift of sight. His neighbors do not believe him (they did not even recognize him); his parents abandoned him because they were afraid and the Pharisees threw him out of the synagogue because he recognized and acknowledged Jesus as a prophet. In a series of dramatic confrontations with the Pharisees, the man becomes more and more enlightened about the truth of who Jesus is while the Pharisees become more and more entrenched in their blindness to the truth. The irony of this situation is not lost on Jesus who observes, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.”
To me the best part of this story comes at the end. Although abandoned by the people closest to him, the healed man is not abandoned by Jesus. In fact, Jesus searches for and finds the man. He is not left alone with his new-found faith. The healed man’s rejection draws him closer to Jesus and into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Before he healed the man blind from birth, Jesus told the disciples "While I am in the world, I am the light of the world" (John 9:5). Today Jesus is a very real presence in our world. And those of us who follow Jesus are challenged to be "the light of [our] world" (Matt. 5:14). St. Paul tells us in today's Second Reading "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light, for light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth" (Ephesians 5:8-9). Although most of us cannot restore sight to those who are blind, anyone who encounters us should recognize the light of Christ shining through us and hopefully, we will not be blind to the light of Christ shining through them.
O God,
the author and source of all light,
you gaze into the depths of our hearts.
Do not permit the powers of darkness to hold us captive
but touch our eyes and open them to our failures and sins.
Touch our ears and open them to the cries of the poor and the lonely.
Touch our hearts and open them to your love and trust.
We ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
holy and life-giving God for ever and ever.
AMEN.
