Blindness overcome

When the church welcomes the Elect during the season of Lent and travels with them through the scrutinies, the readings for Year A are used.

Fr Richard Healey recounts his awe at the natural beauty he witnessed while driving through the snowy mountains, appreciating the gift of sight. He connects this to the gradual degradation  of his own vision and the importance of eye care in today’s screen-focused world. The episode centres on the biblical story of Jesus healing a blind man from John 9, highlighting the rarity of such miracles in scripture. Richard explores the deeper spiritual transformation that accompanies the man’s newfound sight, urging listeners to embrace openness and change through faith. He draws from the narrative to encourage a shift from close-mindedness to a profound understanding and worship of God, advocating for a life transformed by divine intervention.

(00:00:00) – Seeing is such a precious gift. This week I got to go away for a few days and went down to visit my parents. And then I kind of came the slightly longer way back, driving through the snowy mountains and staying overnight at Gundagai. And then on Thursday, I stopped at one of the nearby lakes, about a 30 day detour off the the Hume Highway. And when I just first drove around this mountainous, kind of windy road, and the first glimpse of just the sapphire blue waters of the lake, I was just like, oh my gosh, you know, I’m really grateful for the opportunity to go the detour, to be able to see, just for glimpse, just the beauty of nature. And, you know, obviously wear glasses. And my eyes have continued to deteriorate over the years as I’ve got older and older and all of that, that sense of how significant, how important and particularly as a geek, you know, spending so much time on the computer and doing all of the kind of creative or hopefully creative stuff that I do that the design work and, and whatever, you know, eyesight is such a crucial part of that.

(00:01:15) – And, you know, having to take care of your eyes is really important. And here ends the public health message! The sense of seeing – that ability to be able to behold beauty around us, is such a precious gift, and to have someone that you know has lost their eyesight, that’s a tragedy. But if someone that has never even been able to see from the day of their birth, the day of the the creation, and you know what a loss that is for those of us who take these things just for granted and across the whole of the Old Testament, you know, there’s only one story that I could find of someone being healed from blindness, which is the story of Tobit, and that was of him going blind later, later on in life, of lying under a wool and having birds drop on their on his eyes and causing a disease and an infection. So it’s a different thing for someone to be born blind, to be healed. So clearly they’re celebrating for a just cause, because it is an extraordinary moment in the life of Jesus and for this man.

(00:02:34) – And it’s not often that we get to read a whole chapter of the Gospels at Sunday Mass. And so do you read all 41 verses of this ninth chapter of John’s Gospel. You know, clearly the church is wanting us to take the time to reflect on that. But across the 41 verses, it’s only really two verses that focus in on the actual healing moment. And I was really tempted to bring in a tray of dirt and to spit into the dirt and to make a paste because, you know, boys like making mud cakes and particularly out of your own spit, like, that’s pretty, pretty gross, pretty good. And I thought, no, probably not a wise idea. It might encourage inappropriate behaviour in the younger members of the community. It’s such a powerful image of Jesus, you know, getting directly involved. But it’s also so simple. He’s bad. He makes a paste, he rubs it on the man’s eyes, go off and wash in the pool of sand in the pool of Siloam.

(00:03:37) – The man does it. He goes, he washes, and he’s able to see. I mean, imagine what’s happening in that man’s mind. And what’s happening is he’s beginning to kind of look around. You know, there’s a similar story in the gospel of Mark of a person who is able to see after some time, wasn’t born blind in this instance. And he says, well, yeah, I can see people, but they look like trees walking around. So obviously there’s a little bit more work required. And I love that story as well, that Jesus doesn’t get it right the first time, that sometimes it needs this process of healing for us to receive this, this whole transformation. So across the 41 verses, the two verses, and then the story is kind of repeated a few times. Clearly this is not just about the physical healing of the man. It’s about the transformation that happens in this person’s life. And we see it also because the man first really doesn’t know who Jesus is. Maybe he is the Messiah, maybe he’s the prophet.

(00:04:40) – Maybe there is something more. You see this slow kind of opening up. It’s not just his eyes physically that are open, but the whole experience of his life is opened to the power of God. And is this slow transformation that we all long for, that our eyes are actually opened to see and behold the action and the work of God, because most of the people in the story are able to see. But do they actually see? Of course they don’t. The Pharisees are so closed. How could this man be the Messiah? He breaks the Sabbath. How can he be doing something that is the work of God if he’s not doing something that is in fulfilment of the commandments of the Lord? You may be his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. You know all of these close minded attitudes, and I see that within my own heart so often, just that the sense of thinking, yes, I know this. I’ve got this. I figured this out. I worked it all out.

(00:05:41) – But there’s so much more. There’s this new level of depths that we can come into, you know, and as we’ve journeyed with. Well, there’s only six of the seven here today, but of our catechumens who are now the elect, who have now continued this journey. And in three weeks time we’ll complete this first stage of their journey as they are baptised and received into the church, the transformation of their hearts and lives, this openness to the work of God, this desire and willingness to be changed and transformed by all that God has done. And it’s a great model for us of what can be in our lives as we open ourselves, as we let the wonder of God slowly be revealed, and as we open our eyes to the reality around us, and as we just with the the eyes of a child begin to just to delight and to see the wonder of what God is doing, let’s indeed allow this man to call us more deeply into faith like he did. Let’s acknowledge that when Jesus is there before us and he says that yes, the person you’re speaking to, I am the one.

(00:06:57) – The. We also might fall down in worship before the Lord, that we might also give ourselves more wholeheartedly and more fully to God in the wonder of what he’s doing for us.