The Fruit of the Deed

As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth. He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on his eyes, 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. (John 9:1, 6-7)

A reflection from Father Tudgay for the Fourth Sunday of Lent.

The conundrum that this weekend’s Gospel Passage draws us into is that Jesus relies on the miracles that he performs on others to illustrate his truth and identity. In the case of the man born blind, we see that Jesus immediately confronts the prejudice of the day: that the infirmity of someone was precisely due to the fact that either they or their parents had done something to merit God’s vengeful, debilitating wrath. “Who sinned, this man, or his parents”, they ask in response to the discovery of his handicap. Of course, it isn’t his biological parents that had anything to do with his infirmity. 

Our first parents, Adam and Eve, and their disobedience to God’s will, as the fall is depicted at the beginning of Genesis, are the ones whose sin is overturned by Christ’s intervention. This encounter between Jesus and man who was blind from birth is situated in the Book of Signs in Saint John’s Gospel. The questions posed by the disciples creates an irony in this encounter: their question about the one unable to see reveals that they, themselves are the ones who are in the darkness. The blindness of the blind man reveals the deeper spiritual blindness in the disciples and in the Pharisees. 

To “open the eyes of the blind”, as Isaiah predicts of the Messiah, is less literal and, by the example of the Disciples, highly metaphorical. Perhaps, falsely, the parents of this man believed that they, somehow, were responsible for their son’s blindness because of a sin they committed or mistake they made. Imagine the guilt and shame they must have carried! Again, the infirmity that our friend has lived with since birth is no one’s fault, per se, but the result of the Original fall. Yet, Jesus’ focus is less on the physical infirmity of the blind man, but more of the spiritual blindness of the disciples and the Pharisees. One type of blindness results in a physical limitation that can be overcome with the assistance of others and the inherent strength of the other senses. The other type of blindness – the spiritual one – is equally the result of Original Sin and can only be overcome with the assistance of God’s grace. 

During these days, the grace of God that is at work in us and the way that we dispose ourselves to that grace through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, results in the transformation of our sometimes subtle incapacities to see God’s grace at work in our lives. Every encounter with Christ is an encounter that overturns the impact of Original Sin and the inherent blindness that comes from it. The restoration of the innocence and purity – to see with Christ’s eyes – is only captured through God’s grace.