WE ARE BORN BLIND

SUNDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF LENT   

1 Sam 16:1,6-7,10-13; Ps 23; Eph 5:8-14; Jn 9:1-41

The Light that enlightens All Thing

God made us from the beginning to be light or Light bearers. This is another way of saying that God intends us to be like Him. God is light, and there is no darkness in Him at all. He communicates his light to creatures through His Word. Therefore, the fact that He created all things through His Word implies that every creature contains the light of God within it. The light in created things is their truth by which they share in God’s light or existence. God is existence; Hence, He introduced Himself to Moses as ‘I Am.’ Exodus 3:15. Everything in existence shares in God’s light and truth through the word of God that brings things into existence. Rational creatures also participate in the light of God through their existence. But they have a greater capacity for participation in God through their rational nature, by which they receive God by a deliberate act of knowing and loving. We have this privilege by our rational nature. We have considered the rational nature we possess as an invitation to the eternal divine banquet. The human person, among all material creatures, enjoys the privilege of this invitation to divine life and the eternal feast of light. Yet, it is only an invitation and not a fait accompli. We still need to accept the invitation or reject it; we have the freedom to accept or reject the opportunity to dwell eternally in the home of Light.

We once made a bad choice of rejecting the invitation of God to light through the sin of our first parents; a choice each of us reinforces through our personal sins daily. But God, in his infinite mercy and love, disposed things and events so that these initial choices have consequences limited to our mortal life. This privilege granted us by the Incarnation of the Son of God remains intact for each of us till the end of our mortal life. By this divine disposition, the privilege remains true for each of us to enter into the feast of light whenever we change our status of rejection to assent to the invitation. Before the Incarnation, God used a few people to demonstrate what his divine will had planned for us. David is one of the few through whom God demonstrated his love for us. “Fill your horn with oil and go. I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem, for I have chosen myself a king among his sons.” As Samuel was sent to anoint David king of Israel, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to anoint anyone and everyone who repents of their rejection of God’s invitation to the eternal banquet of Light. Our acceptance of the light of God is according to the disposition of our hearts and not according to what we have done; “God does not see as man sees: man looks at appearances, but the Lord looks at the heart.” The correct disposition that attracts God and his anointing is the default rational disposition of openness to divine reality; that is, a faithful disposition to the word of God.

The disposition of a soul believing in the word of God is receptive to the light of God. We all suffered in the darkness due to our unbelief before we came to hear and believe in Jesus Christ. Thus, all who have not professed faith in Jesus Christ remain excluded from the banquet of light in the heavenly kingdom by their disposition. Saint Paul clearly explains this. “You were darkness once, but now you are light in the Lord; be like children of light, for the effects of light are seen in complete goodness and right living and truth. Try to discover what the Lord wants of you, having nothing to do with the futile works of darkness but exposing them by contrast.” Here, he confirms that what is required is our return to our default rational disposition, by which we receive the word of God and live out the will of God. Our constant profession of faith in Jesus Christ habituates us to the divine communion.

Subsequently, the coming of the Eternal Word in human nature is God’s infinite act of merciful love to heal us of our blindness, which we have suffered from birth as children of Adam. The Lord taught this lesson through healing the man born blind in the Gospel. “As Jesus went along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, for him to have been born blind?’ ‘Neither he nor his parents sinned,’ Jesus answered, ‘he was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Applying these words of our Lord to the blindness of all men from birth through the original sin of Adam and Eve, we come to our conclusion that the original sin was meant to happen as a test-run of the freedom of the human person. The choice, though sinful, confirmed the free will of Adam and Eve to choose God or reject Him. It is a foundation for the work of making the human person into the likeness of God. As our Lord stated, we were born blind so that the glory of God may be displayed in us. The Incarnation of the Eternal Word is the display of God’s glory in human nature. By the Incarnation, God has made His Son our Good Shepherd. “The Lord is my shepherd; there nothing I shall want. Fresh and green are the pastures where he gives me repose. Near restful waters he leads me, to revive my drooping spirit.”

Let us pray: O God, who through your Word reconcile the human race to yourself in a wonderful way, grant, we pray, that with prompt devotion and eager faith the Christian people may hasten toward the solemn celebrations to come. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.