ST. JOHN 9:13-17

                                                              

They brought the one who was once blind to the Pharisees. [V.13]

St. John does not specify why the man’s neighbours, who had been rejoicing with him, would suddenly take him to the Pharisees, the religious authorities. It may well have been fear, since it was the Sabbath and they might have been afraid of being punished, by association, for violating the Sabbath. Many Muslim countries have religious police, many nations have secret police, many people living in such places of terror will betray their neighbour to save their own skin.

It is only now that St. John specifies it was the Sabbath: Now Jesus had made clay and opened his eyes on a Sabbath. [v.14]

Making clay, healing the eyes, two acts of prohibited work on the Sabbath. We might wonder why repeatedly Jesus does things which clearly violate the Sabbath law, granted a law made dangerously complex by all the picayune additions made by generations of religious leaders.The answer is very clear: The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. That is why the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” [Mk.2:27,28]

If satan cannot tempt us to obvious evil acts then he will see to trick us by seducing us to overdue what appears to be good, hence likely all the add-ons to the Sabbath law of it being a day of rest may well have appeared as a good idea: in the end the religious leaders turned a holy day of rest into an exhausting day of endless avoidance of violating the minutiae of the almost innumerable sabbath prohibitions.

In each of His challenging words and actions Jesus is seeking to point out and separate what is from our loving Father and what originates in our own efforts to shape things in life, in our relationship with God, each other, self, creation, according to our own egos.

Then the Pharisees also asked him how he was able to see. He said to them, “He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see.” [v.15] There is a clinical coldness, the coldness of hate, for hate is cold and dark, in the Pharisees questioning of the man, for their end goal is not humble openness to a miracle of healing, but to build a case against Jesus. The man who had been born blind does not name Jesus. He simple, concisely states the obvious facts.

So some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a sinful man do such signs?” And there was a division among them. [v.16]

Obsessed with their own interpretation of things in their arrogance they presume to know who is and who is not from God merely by external observation, an observation biased by their own blindness to the miracle, itself an example of Divine Love, of which they are also ignorant because they are intellectually stunted by pride.

It is paralleled, in our own day, by the rationalists, relativists, subjectivists, that is by those who, like the Pharisees, apply their own methodology to evaluating, in our day the Church and Her teaching, thus Christ Himself, in the Pharisees case the entire history of the Chosen People and the Scriptures, like the psalms and words of the prophets pointing to the Messiah. They refused and we have lost the humble wonder and truth of the psalmist: …..Where can I go from Your Spirit? From Your presence, where can I flee?..... I praise You, because I am wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works! My very self You know…….[cf. Ps. 139]

Humility is the key which opens our beings to the God of Love, otherwise our hearts are tight shut like some cemented over mouth of a cave where neither sound nor light can penetrate and to be in that place of loneliness is a living hell.

Their hatred of Jesus and determination to kill Him is there too in other Sabbath healings as noted by St. Matthew: 12:10-14 and St. Luke: 13:10-14.

Again, it is important to remember before Whom they were blind: The Incarnate One, the Messiah, the Redeemer, the Beloved of the Father, Jesus who loves us.

It can be as challenging for us as for the people, not just the Pharisees, who need to open their eyes of heart and soul to see the real Jesus and not just the carpenter’s son, for likewise to open with eyes of faith and heart of love for the Beloved, to see Jesus in what appears to be bread and wine, what appears to be a mere man at the altar, what appears to be an ordinary person, perhaps a person who is homeless, of a different race or religion, perhaps someone not a friend but an actual enemy. There too we encounter Jesus and what gifts, if we welcome the Jesus of many disguises, we will receive, when we come with our little gifts, more! He comes with lavishness.

We would do well to meditate again, to contemplate the Prologue of the Gospel, for the very One St. John, through the Holy Spirit, reveals to us there is the One we are blind before, with closed hearts, if we insist Jesus, and all Jesus reveals, teaches, be in accord with our preconceptions and prejudices.

In a sense Jesus, even though promised throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, still arrives among us, two millennia ago and in this very moment of encounter with Him, as the Divine-Surprise-Gift of the Father.

The joy of a gift is as much the expectation of what is hidden within the wrappings as the discovery of what is therein once unwrapped.

The wrapping of the Father’s gift, in a sense, is everything from Genesis to the fiat of Mary. Her fiat is the beginning of the Father’s gift being revealed. Hence the excitement of St. John the Baptist leaping in the womb of his mother, for the Holy Spirit opened his eyes, heart, soul and the entire leaping is his own yes to discipleship.

Relentlessly pursuing their determination, the Messiah should be neither surprise nor gift as God intended, but rather be their version, the challenge unfolds:  So they said to the blind man again, “What do you have to say about Him, since He opened your eyes?” [v.17]

How stunned they must have been by the answer: He said, “He is a prophet.” Another humble person, this time Jesus opening the eyes of her heart, restoring her dignity to her, also said of Jesus: “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet.” [4:19]

A prophet is not a foreteller per se of the future, rather an authentic prophet illuminates the will of God in the moment and Jesus is the primary and last prophet sent by the Father. Jesus is Himself the Father’s Word-Gift, the Father’s complete Word, a word containing within His Very Person all we need and Jesus, through suffering, is the absolute fulfiller of the Will of the Father, the template, the path, for us to follow with Jesus the into the will of the Father, where we live, live out, the gift of love, for it is love which is the purpose and meaning of our existence: love between the Holy Trinity and us, between we and all others, with self, all the return of love we give to the Holy Trinity.

All this love, beauty, light, truth, hope, path of life and meaning, purpose of life, redemption, mercy, grace, joy is missed, if we insist with our puny brains, we are smarter than God.



© 2019 – Fr. Arthur Joseph

ST. JOHN 9:1-12

                                                            

What unfolds in this entire chapter, both through Christ’s love-healing action and His teaching is a type of mini-catechism on our baptismal vocation to live in imitation of Christ as servants, to be present and helpful to those who suffer, to be as well witnesses to the Gospel of life and hope,

Though commenting on another teaching of Jesus in St. Matthew, Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis’ words are applicable here: Jesus is our responsible and tender Lord in a personal, intimate, exclusive and jealous manner. Not because He is also Lord of all the myriad angelic hosts, who serve His glory continually with magnificence, does He think any less of His fragile creature, man. Indeed, He would have come to earth, suffered, and died exactly as He did even for only one of us! [1]

As Jesus passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. [v. 1]

St. John’s final words in chapter 8 are of Jesus passing by as He escaped through the midst of the crowd trying to stone Him. Here, as if that passing motion was a continuous movement, indeed, all Christ’s movements on earth were salvificly purposeful, the passing by becomes a moment of recognition of another aspect of Christ’s love, for He who is Light, He who is all seeing, sees a man whom created light has never penetrated, who embodies in his from birth-blindness, that which is ours before baptism, the blindness we choose post-baptism when we sin; also this blind man is representative of that which Isaiah foresaw the Redeemer would come to accomplish: To open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness. [Is.42:7]

Being Light Himself, Jesus also experiences in His humanity the gift of sight. Awareness of the blind man did not only pain His heart because the man could not physically see, experience light, but because Christ was in that moment once more profoundly aware of the blindness resulting from original sin, and the chosen blindness, post-baptism, of our actual sins.

His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” [v.2]

The whole mystery of sin and human suffering can be found throughout Sacred Scripture and in our own hearts. It is the paradox that not all sin results in suffering per se, nor is all suffering a direct result of our committing a sin, and yet!

It is the ‘and yet’ that also is found throughout Sacred Scripture, notably in the book of Job, and still the mystery remains! In Genesis 20:5 the Lord speaks of the generational punishment He inflicts, because He is a jealous God, upon those who hate Him, yet in Ezekiel 18:20 He says only the one who sins will die, and in Luke 13:2 Jesus challenges the notion that the Galileans who were killed were more sinful than those who were not.

St. John Paul II give us a powerful catecheses in his Apostolic Letter: On The Christian Meaning of Human Suffering [2], exploring this mystery of evil/sin and suffering.

Who among us when seeing someone we love suffer, or suffer ourselves, has not challenged God in words not that far removed from those of the disciples pondering the mystery before them of a man born blind, born suffering?

Had Adam and Eve not committed original sin then evil and suffering would not have entered our lives, nor would we ourselves chose to sin, inflict suffering upon ourselves or others, for neither we would be sinners, nor anyone else.

In the Roman Rite, in the great Exultet of the Easter Vigil the Church cries out Her joyful acceptance of this mystery of sin and suffering: O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!

Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him…….[v.3] As with the story of Job, as with, for example, those miraculous cures which occur at Lourdes and other shrines, or are investigated as part of the processes for the beatification and canonization of saints, yes and as too, if embraced, all forms of suffering, physical, emotional, spiritual – as best we can do so without falling into the trap of worrying about the ‘quality’ of our yes – enable us to become icons of the manifestation of the works of God, primary the work of redemption through our uniting our sufferings with those of Christ that we might make up….what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of His body, which is the church….[Col.1:24].

“I must work the works of the Him who sent Me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work…..” [v. 4] Doing, in union with Jesus, the works of the Father is constitutive of our baptismal vocation, and we do these works through active faith, living the Gospel with our lives without compromise before the night of persecution arrives to such an extent our final work is martyrdom, or the night of natural death arrives and our final work is to, as Jesus did, commit ourselves into the hands of the Father.

“While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” [v.5] To see and bask in, to dwell in the light of Christ, Himself our light, is to have the blindness of sin exorcised from our mind, will, heart, soul.

Now something is about to happen which, given the changing of water into wine, and later the use of water to wash the Apostle’s feet, the transubstantiation of bread and wine into His Body and Blood during the Last Supper, a gift given anew and immediately in every Holy Mass/Divine Liturgy, the embracing of the wood of the Cross, transforming the tree of death from the Garden into the tree, the altar, of life, and in His glorious Resurrection transforming mortality in the flesh to immortality for each of us, He who is the Lord of all that is created, takes the very dust/earth from which the human person has been created: When He had said this, He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, [v. 6]

Some translations say Jesus smeared the clay, rather than anointed. Either way what Jesus does here is indeed a anointing for that which until now has been darkness, by the touch of Light Himself, is smeared away, pushed asunder, fractured like smoked glass that blocks light and as the dark shards crash to the ground, from the very body and being of the man, as the sun shatters night at dawn, light penetrates the eyes, the mind, the heart, the soul of the man.

This miracle occurs with Baptism, with absolution when we have sinned and confess, for the very act of going to confession is to own our blindness, it is to cry out: Lord, grant that I might see. [Lk.18:41]

and said to him, “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed, and came back able to see. [v.7]

In 2 Kings 5:10 we see Elisha tells Naaman to go and wash in the river if he wishes to be cured. We must be active participants whenever we ask for any miracle, that is to not simply utter words of faith but have faith that is active. The Gospels show us where Jesus could not do many miracles because of the lack of faith of the people, Mt. 13:55, and as well the humility of the father seeking the cure of his child who admitted that while he did have faith, he also needed help to fully believe, Mk. 9:24: thus the Blind Man, by going to do as Jesus told him makes an act of faith.

It is the journey of return wherein the man experiences the reality of sight, frankly of being enlightened, that is filled with light, natural light to be sure, but more importantly with the light of Christ our Light Himself.

His neighbours and those who had seen him earlier as a beggar said, “Isn’t this the one who used to sit and beg?” Some said, “It is,” but others said, “No, he just looks like him.” He said, “I am.” So they said to him, “So how were your eyes opened?” [vs. 8-10].

The fact the man had returned clearly without assistance, clearly walking with the assurance of a sighted person peaked the curiosity of those specially named by St. John as the man’s neighbours, a way of telling us these people can be trusted as witnesses to the miraculous healing of the man’s blindness to sight. It is also interesting St. John has the man use the phrase “I am.”, rather than the colloquial ‘its me’, for the “I am” is powerfully declarative of being.

He replied, “The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went there and washed and was able to see.”  And they said to him, “Where is He?” He said, “I don’t know.” [vs. 11,12] There is a humble simplicity in the man’s unambiguous reply, and it is also clear from his words that Jesus had moved on once He sent the man to Siloam. Not unexpectedly the stage is set for another confrontation with Jesus by the Pharisees.

[1] FIRE of MERCY HEART of the WORLD, Volume II, page 69, Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Ignatius Press, 2003

[2] https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1984/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_11021984_salvifici-doloris.html



© 2019 Fr. Arthur Joseph