If you could give up one of your five senses: touch, smell, hearing, sight or speech, which would you choose? Would you give up your ability to smell? Could you let go of your hearing? How about the ability to speak? Those are all important and it would be difficult not to have those abilities. In my opinion, however, I would choose to give up one of those senses before giving up my vision. I’d rather be mute or deaf rather than blind. If anything, I think it would be frightening to not be able to see.
The gift of sight is a real blessing. With light entering our eyes, we can see the beauty of the world; we can look upon the faces of our loved ones. We can look through a telescope to see distant planets and stars and can look into a microscope to see the smallest parts of things. I can look into the mirror every morning and say “wow!”
But as wonderful as our vision is, it can also be a curse.
Too often, we use our eyes to judge people. We size people up according to what we see. If beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, so are judgments made about what or who is not beautiful to us. We categorize people according to what we see: skin color, the shape of the body, the manner of dress, obvious disabilities. Our eyes can deceive us and do others a great injustice.
In the first reading today, we hear how the prophet Samuel was told to anoint one of the Jesse’s son the new king of Israel. Samuel looked upon all the sons of Jesse and was judging them on the basis of their appearance. He never thought that God might choose the one son who least appeared to be a king. In the end, God tells Samuel not to judge by what he sees because God sees what no one else sees. God looks into the heart and does not judge by appearance. God knew which son would be king. Samuel couldn’t see it. But God could.
In the Gospel today Jesus encounters a man who is blind. This man, we are told, was blind from birth. As a result he begged for a living and was a regular fixture in the area. Everyone knew him as the blind man. Then, Jesus comes along and rubs the man’s eyes with mud, created with his saliva, then tells him to go wash it off. When the man does so, his eyes are opened.
Then, something ironic occurs. The man who was blind can now see and, with his vision, he comes to recognize Jesus as the healer then as the Messiah. But the religious leaders could not see what the formerly blind man could now see. The healed man was able to see Jesus for who he truly was. But the religious leaders could not. Even though they knew that the blind man was healed by Jesus they could not see the truth of Jesus’ identity. They refused to believe that Jesus could do such a thing. Why were they so blind?
The fact is that the religious leaders, for the most part, had already closed their minds and hearts to Jesus. They refused to believe that God was working through him. They were jealous and fearful of their own status. So, they chose to close their eyes to what Jesus was doing and to close their ears to what he was saying. They even try to dispute the fact that the blind man was really blind before. They question his parents and try to intimidate him. Eventually, they call him a sinner and throw him out of the temple.
Again, there is a great irony here. The man who was blind has real sight; those who can see are the blind ones. In the end, Jesus tells the religious leaders: “You say you can see but your blindness remains.” In other words, they had no faith and, as a result, they were even more blind than the blind.
This Lenten season invites us to examine how we see reality. There are lots of questions we should be asking ourselves in light of this Gospel.
It’s very easy to fall into the blindness that the religious leaders in Jesus’ day seemed to suffer from. When we think we know it all; when we think things are perfectly clear to us; when we have our minds already made up—that is probably when we are most blind.
But when we acknowledge that we don’t always understand everything; that we don’t always see things clearly and that our faith vision is faulty, at best, then it is easier to invite the Lord to give us real vision. When we humbly acknowledge our limitations and disabilities, that is when we are most free to accept the healing that God wants to give. And the first blessing of that healing is to praise God for what he has done for us just as the man who was healed praised Jesus for being the source of his healing.
How’s your faith vision? Lent might be the time when you should check your faith vision. Maybe you need glasses. Some faith contact lenses. Perhaps a spiritual lasik procedure would be good.