CHOOSING DARKNESS OR LIGHT
Fourth Sunday of Lent- A
In 1945, a young soldier named John Howard Griffin suffered a severe head injury in a bombing raid while serving in East Asia in World War II. His eyesight was damaged and over the next year-and-a-half the became completely blind. Ten years later he suddenly began to see flashes of light; his sight slowly began to return and eventually was completely restored. In his memoir, Scattered Shadows, he describes getting the first blurred glimpse of his wife and children.
Growing accustomed to his blindness was, of course, exceedingly difficult. Surprisingly, he found it just as hard to adjust to seeing again.
Our Gospel reading today is about blindness, the theme of light and darkness.
From testimonies of men who became blind or who somehow regained their sight, we see how the man born blind felt when Jesus gave him physical sight. In the Gospel story, there is a more important miracle that takes place. The blind man’s miracle of physical sight was nothing compared to the second miracle Jesus worked for him, the gift of faith that John stresses in the Gospel reading.
John implies that this gift of faith comes gradually, not all at once. John describes the miracle as taking place in three stages.
The first stage comes when people ask the blind man about his cure. The blind man replies, “The man called Jesus made clay, anointed my eyes, and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So, I went there and washed and was able to see.” The blind man’s first perception of Jesus was that he was a remarkable man, but just a man.
The second stage in the blind man’s gift of spiritual sight comes when the Pharisees interrogated him, “What do you think of this man who opened your eyes?” The man replied, “He is a prophet.” The blind man’s answer reveals a growth in his understanding of Jesus. His spiritual vision of Jesus takes a giant leap forward. The more he thinks of what happened, the more convinced the blind man becomes that Jesus must be more than just another man: he must be a man of God, a prophet!
This brings us to the third stage of the blind man’s perception of Jesus, when the blind man meets Jesus face-to-face. Jesus was no longer around when the man returned with his sight restored after washing in the Pool of Siloam. Now Jesus asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man answers, “Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?”
Jesus replies, “You have seen him, and he is speaking to you.” “Lord, I believe,” the man replies, and falls on his knees before Jesus.
The man’s spiritual sight, his gift of faith in Jesus, was far more miraculous than his gift of physical sight. Let us pray that the gift of faith may grow ever brighter in our lives during this Lenten Season.