Blind from birth, the radiance of Love

When and where can Love be more radiant than in the sight of one who has never seen? Everything that to those who see seems ordinary or even banal, to a blind man from birth who receives sight becomes full of wonder and an understanding radiance. It is, without a doubt, the opening of Heaven here and now. For one like him, the Resurrection passes from feeling and intuition into the most direct embodiment. For a former blind man from birth, the whole world that he begins to know through sight wears the garment of the Resurrection. Nothing superfluous, nothing insignificant, nothing random, but everything and everything filled with the brilliant light of the Resurrection. A blind man brought to sight is a resurrection from dull darkness, at least as precious as a resurrection from the darkness of death.

In contrast to the blind man who receives his sight is the blind seer, the one who sees the light outside, but inside spends his time in deep darkness. There are all those who have made their mental blockages, formalism, and laziness a reason for envy and permanent contradictions. For them, the mind's eye and the Sight of Truth remain a type of blindness that even God cannot touch. For the blind man with sight, however, everything becomes a miracle. Surrounded by darkness from the outside, receiving sight fills him with amazement and inner joy. For him, Love becomes a rainbow of stirring states that animate the moments of his life. More than the blind with sight, those converted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ enjoy the shining Love. For them, the darkness of ignorance becomes a super luminous Sight, which causes everything in life to be shrouded in Mystery. Without them, the Gospel would remain either an intransigent and unfrequented Law, or an idyllic and outdated story. For converts from the crucified Love of Christ, Love in Truth and Truth in Love are the sun of night and day, for whom nothing more important in life exists.

We are nearing the end of the forty days of the Feast of the Resurrection. On Wednesday, the accolade of the Resurrection is made, and we enter its final stage, which is the Ascension, and through it we reach the Feast of the Coming of the Holy Spirit, the greatest Gift of the Resurrection. Pentecost is nothing other than the bringing back of the Resurrection to earth and its permanence in/among people through those who learn to share in the Spirit, as the Scripture says. We ask ourselves rhetorically, the forty days, as forty steps of friendship with the Risen Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and the love of the Father, were they steps of learning in the Laboratory of the Resurrection or were they days of failure due to agendas increasingly loaded with concerns that sabotage our lives?

The resurrection, like any Gift sent from God, through which He Himself offers Himself, must be received and put into action. But if the resurrection is not received and not valued, we are playing with Fire. And instead of being a blessing from God, it turns into our judgment and curse.

This Sunday’s Gospel, an amazing and meaningful episode, shows us precisely this: how can we pass by Jesus Christ, who, at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles, declares: “I am the Light of the world” (John 8:12). Despite all His revelations, Jesus is rejected by the Jews and as He leaves the Temple, on the way, He comes across an unnamed blind man in difficulty, an occasion in which a theological dialogue arises between Christ and His disciples. Jesus is asked by the disciples about the cause of his blindness: “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” (John 9:2). The disciples prove that they have learned from Christ the lesson of the direct connection between sin and illness/infirmity. However, it is not enough to know the lesson if you do not also have the meanings, which give access to the vision and discernment of Reality. Therefore, Jesus rejects this type of theological concern and refers to another view of things: everything happens in the world by the will, care and control of God: “Neither this man sinned, nor his parents, but this was born so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3). That is, all existence comes from Him and is dependent on Him. And when it seems that there are things in the world that contrast with His love (illness, death, suffering, etc.), which is why God can be contradicted, judged or questioned, Jesus shows them that everything that happens is under His providence and everything can be turned towards His Glory or towards our curse. And he makes a concrete demonstration with the man born blind, through surprising, deeply theological and prophetic gestures. He goes in front of the blind man, spits, makes clay which he spreads on the blind man's eyes and sends him to the pool in the south of the Temple, in Siloam, to wash (John 9:7). This pool is at the opposite end of the pool of Bethesda in the north of the Temple. In both, Christ performs two signs. In Bethesda with a paralytic, who wastes the Gift, becoming a traitor to God, and, in Siloam with this blind man, who knows how to receive and multiply the Gift, becoming an ardent disciple of Christ.

When he takes the clay and puts it on the eyes of the blind man, Jesus repeats the gestures of God made at the beginning of the world, when he created man. Through the gestures made with the blind man, Christ shows that he has the power to recreate, to rebuild everything that has been distorted. The spit mixed with earth suggests the steam and breath of life of God, who breathed over the statue modeled from the earth at the creation of Adam, and who immediately became a living creature (Genesis 2:7). In the first phase, Jesus restores the tissues of the blind man's eyes, which, for now, cannot see. The anointed of God anoints the eyes of the blind man, and the Spirit of the Father sends the blind man to the water of Siloam, gestures and words in which any Jew could understand that God Himself is in their midst. Therefore, only after washing in the water of the Sent, of the Son of the Father sent into the world, do the eyes of the blind man begin to see the light of the world. Only the water of the Sent One and only the clay from the Creator's hand become elements serving health. In fact, the Blind Man goes through a process of Baptism and Anointing, which brings about the physical restoration and restoration of health.

Immediately come the questions and inquiries from the neighbors, who, puzzled, take the blind man to the Pharisees. The experts in the inquiries first questioned the former blind man and then his parents, all with the aim of accusing his Benefactor (John 9:18, 23). However, all the questions, through religious legal tricks, bypass the miracle incarnate before them and only pursue the accusation of the healer. We are witnessing a web of lies, which organizes a plot against Jesus, through neighbors, through parents, through religious leaders, for one reason: they cannot receive the Light, being in darkness. They cannot receive the Truth, being in lies. The blind man who sees, however, unleashes himself in a freedom that is stinging for them, so that, through the answers given, the accusers become accused, the judges judged, the justified become guilty, and the craftsmen of entangled words become mute, like fish without a voice in front of the overflowing Truth. The investigators of the lie are taken “over the leg” by the power of the Truth and the blinding radiance of Love, which emanated from the blind man who sees, as from an invisible Siloam, making his accusers the blind seers. I know what you do not know: Who this Man is! This is precisely the miracle: You do not know who He is or where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes (John 9:30). Therefore, you are at fault and guilty because you do not know and do not want to know who this Man is. By deliberately avoiding the Truth, you reveal your cunning and make yourselves apostles of lies, from your father the devil (John 8:44). We recognize in this blind man a courage and a dignity, who, for the confession of the Truth full of the radiance of the Love of Christ, accepts excommunication from the religious community of the Jews, which, at that time, was equal to a social sentence of death. For the sake of Jesus, the blind man who sees accepts excommunication rather than denying his Benefactor.

As with the paralytic of Bethesda, Jesus meets the blind man a second time, not to warn him not to sin anymore (John 5:14), but to convince him that excommunication from God is more valuable than the friendship of lies under the guise of God. The blind man has his sight, but remains alone. Everyone steps aside because they face the officialized and institutionalized lie. That is why Jesus comes to him as a friend, grateful that the blind man was also his friend and did not renounce Him in the face of cunning accusations. In the solitude of the blind man with the Truth, Jesus comes with the dialogue of Love, which makes new friends: Do you believe in the Son of Man? Who is the Lord, that I may believe in Him? I am the One who can see (John 9:35). The spiritual eye of the physically blind man is reborn from the relationship with his Friend, Jesus Christ, because He has met him with healing love. It is a double healing. First, the physical eye and then the eye of faith, which is healed only from overwhelming love, which becomes salvation and Resurrection.

The conclusion of the entire episode in the Gospel of John is shocking. It targets Jesus, the blind man, and the Pharisees alike. A man born blind becomes sighted with the Spirit, while the Pharisees judge themselves by judging Jesus. As Jesus becomes light for the blind man who receives Him, in direct proportion, it becomes darkness for the sighted Pharisees who reject Him. This shows that the Risen Jesus divides history into two. Not according to His will, but according to our choice. He is the Light of all, transformed in those who receive Him into understanding illumination, and in those who reject Him into deep and fearful darkness. The lesson is clear: Those who do not receive the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, even if they are surrounded by all the lights of the world, spend their time in a cold darkness.

And again we ask ourselves rhetorically: Who is the blind man, and why does the Light of Christ not change people's hearts? Why do we prefer other lights besides the Light of our Savior? Who are the blind seeing and who are the blind seeing? It seems that the ratio is inversely proportional: The more we close our eyes to the deceptive lights of our age, the more the light of Christ in our hearts goes out, flickering within. And the more we open the eye of faith to receive and understand Christ, the more the seductive spell, from the games of technological lights, loses its alluring power. The evangelical episode from John is a challenge, a request and a direct invitation to a hypostatic response.

University Lecturer Dr. Gheorghe Butuc