Seeing With Spiritual Vision

The Fourth Sunday of Lent (Laetare Sunday), March 22, 2020. Gospel of St. John 9:1-41. Theme: Seeing With Spiritual Vision

Last Sunday John took us to Samaria to become part of the story of the Woman at the Well. With her we were called to have our thirst for love quenched by the living water of Jesus. Next Sunday he will take to the village of Bethany, to the tomb of Lazarus, and ask us, as Easter gets closer, if we really do believe that Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life.

But today John takes us into the great city of Jerusalem and has us participate in one of the most intriguing stories found in the Gospels: the double healing of the Man Born Blind. But also, we witness the tragedy of the Sighted Pharisees losing what spiritual vision they had.  It is a story that is marvelously appropriate for what we are going through these days of COVID-19 and suspended Liturgies.  It is a story about how we perceive things, how we can all experience the same thing and yet look at it so very differently.

It starts off by telling us that the Man Born Blind miraculously receives the gift of physical vision. But as always happens in John’s Gospel, this healing just the first step to a deeper encounter with Jesus. The second healing occurs when the Man Born Blind sees more to Jesus than just a rabbi or a prophet.  He is given the spiritual vision to see that Jesus is the Son of Man, that is, the Promised One, the Christ, the Messiah.

At first, all the Man Born Blind simply says that he was healed by “that man called Jesus.” His understanding of Jesus is very basic. He reports on his healing as a kind of matter of fact re-telling of events and he says: “he put mud on my eyes, told me to wash and now I can see.”

But then the Man is brought before the influential Jewish leaders who do not like the fact that Jesus broke the Sabbath law and they are out to get him. Apparently, the law was more important to them than mercy. The Man Born Blind has to make a conscious choice about his Healer. This leads him to take a step deeper into who Jesus is and he proclaims, “He is a prophet…he is devout…he does God’s will…God is with him!”  The light of spiritual vision is getting brighter within him.

                     

Finally, the healed man is excommunicated because he has come to believe that Jesus is the Son of Man, the Messiah, the long-awaited Christ. His faith and his loyalty are under pressure and persecution has cost him something, but in return Jesus himself seeks the man out in a very personal encounter. The light is shining so brilliantly upon the Man Born Blind that he exclaims, “I do believe, Lord!” and he worships Jesus right then and there. His journey has finally brought him fully out of the darkness and into the light that gives life.

But now on to the tragedy in the story. The Pharisees start off with spiritual vision, that is, they are looking to see how God can be in what has happened. But the more they look at Jesus, the more they ponder the healing, the more blind they become. You see, they focus so exclusively on the externals of the law and religion that they cannot see who it is who stands before them and what an awesome miracle has taken place through him!  They fall into spiritual blindness and Jesus clearly points this danger out to them. And that’s the tragedy in this story.

What a difference in perception we see in this story! Through spiritual vision Man Born Blind sees the Finger of God at work in his healing. Through spiritual blindness the Pharisees see God’s Law disobeyed by someone who must be a sinner because he broke the Sabbath law. Both are looking at the same Person, Jesus of Nazareth.  Both are trying to discern the same phenomenon that has taken place. Yet, the Pharisees can only see a Threat and a Lawbreaker, while the Man Born Blind sees his Lord and Savior.

This Gospel story speaks to me about how people today are viewing the COVID-19 restrictions and Mass suspensions with two different sets of eyes, so to speak.   We are all looking at the same thing. We are all experiencing the same basic restrictions. Yet, some take on the limited short-sighted outlook of the Pharisees and focus on what is being deprived to them.  Others, it seems to me, are more like the Man Born Blind. They use spiritual vision to see in these restrictions a call to maintain and deepen their relationship with Christ in ways they may not have realized before. 

We can choose to see COVID-19 and its consequences as a tragedy that deprives us of our usual expressions of religious freedom; or we can choose to see it as an opportunity to learn new ways of being with Jesus, of developing a personal program of spiritual exercises to enable us to keep growing in our faith despite the restrictions.

We can choose to see the Church primarily in its more formal institutional aspect with ministers and ritual ceremonies to which we do not now have easy access, or we can choose to embrace the equally true vision of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, composed of people baptized into Christ, and realize that we can still stay in touch with one another, still pray for one another, and help any who might be in need so that no one walks through this difficulty alone.

We can choose to focus our sight on the Mass as the only way to worship and bemoan the fact that is now being denied to us, or we can choose to see this lack as an opportunity to practice other ways that our tradition and saint give us to remain in intimate communion with Jesus, such as spiritual communion, prayer in its various forms and meditation from the heart.

We can choose to see the Scriptures as something reserved for proclamation in the Church during the liturgy, or we can choose to take up the Bible in our own homes and develop a habit of reading the Word of God daily, remembering that Jesus said he would be with us always and come to dwell within us by means of this very Word.

Now, of course, the restrictions to the sacraments and the suspension of the Mass is not an ideal, but we can, indeed, choose to not waylaid in our faith-relationship with God and one another because of this.  We can make use of our spiritual vision to see Jesus still with us and among us!  Let’s try our best to avoid the tragedy of the Pharisees who saw only the negative.  The Messiah Lord was standing right in front of them but all they saw was a threat to their religious laws and formalities.  Let’s develop the 20/20 spiritual vision of the Man Born Blind and see Jesus reaching out to us in the present situation.  In this way, we can each continue on in our Lenten journey to Easter with serenity of mind and heart, trusting in the loving providence of God our Father.

I would like to end with a prayer that is extremely relevant to us today and which has given millions of people hope and perseverance in the midst of struggle. It is called the Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;

Enjoying one moment at a time;

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it;

Trusting that He will make things right if I surrender to His Will;

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life

and supremely happy with Him forever and ever in the next. Amen.