The Blind Man

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought to him a blind man, whom they begged him to touch. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. Putting spittle on his eyes and laying his hands on him, he asked, ‘Can you see anything?’ The man who was beginning to see replied, ‘I can see people. They look like trees as they walk around.’ Then he laid his hands on the man's eyes again, and he saw clearly; he was cured, and he could see everything plainly and distinctly. And Jesus sent him home, saying, ‘Do not even go into the village’” (Mark 8:22-26).

Our Lord came to Bethsaida accompanied by His disciples. As soon as He got there, this blind man was brought to Him so that He could touch him.

Our Lord took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. Using spittle, He made some mud and put it on his eyes.

It's a bit curious that Our Lord would use spittle, but it's interesting to see how He uses different aspects of His human nature to work miracles, as though saying that He was truly man, and also that all the natural endowments that we have can be used for a good purpose.

Then He laid His hands on him and asked if he could see anything.

The blind man looked up and said, “I see men, but they look like trees walking.” And He laid hands on him again, and the blind man looked intently and was restored, “and saw everything clearly.”

Our Lord usually cured people instantaneously. In this case, however, He does it in stages, perhaps because the faith of the blind man at first was weak, and Jesus wanted to cure body and soul together.

He helps this man, taking him by the hand with a lot of affection, in order to strengthen his faith. To see nothing at all, and then see indistinctly, was something.

But Our Lord wanted to give him a clear and penetrating gaze that would let him appreciate the wonders of creation.

Probably, the first thing the blind man saw clearly was the face of Jesus looking at him with compassionate satisfaction.

What happened to this blind man in the material order can help us to consider the nature of spiritual blindness. We frequently meet many who are spiritually blind and cannot see the essential thing—the face of Christ present in the life of the world.

Our Lord often spoke of this sort of blindness: when He told the Pharisees that they were blind, or when He referred to those who had eyes but did not see.

“Leave them alone;” we're told in St. Matthew, “they are blind leaders of the blind. And if one blind person leads another, both will fall into the pit” (Matt. 15:14). Our Lord talks about blindness frequently.

“They may look and look but never perceive, listen and listen but never understand, to avoid changing their ways and being healed,” we're told in St. Mark (Mark 4:12).

In St. John: “It is for judgment that I've come into this world so that those without sight may see and those with sight may become blind” (John 9:39).

To see clearly is a great gift of God: to see what is good, to see God in the middle of our ordinary tasks, to see our fellow men as children of God, to see what is really worthwhile, and even to contemplate, with God and through God, divine beauty.

Our Lord has left His signature on all the works of creation. We need, too, to see with unclouded vision if the heart is to be able to love, and if it is to remain young, as God wants it to be.

Many people are not completely blind, but their faith is weak. Their sight is dim and they can scarcely make out the good that lies on the horizon of their life.

These Christians have little awareness of what it means to have the presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, scant appreciation perhaps of the immense worth of the Sacrament of Penance, of the infinite value of a single Mass, of the beauty of apostolic celibacy.

They lack purity of heart. They need to be more vigilant in the guarding of their senses— the doors of the soul—particularly the sense of sight.

The soul that begins to have interior life appreciates the treasure it bears within its heart. Each day it will make a greater effort to deny admission into the mind of any image that prevents or hinders the soul's close contact with God.

It's not a question of not seeing—because after all, we need our sight to get along in the world, to see what we're doing in our work, in our social relationships. It’s rather a question of not looking at whatever we ought not to be looking at, a matter of being clean of heart, of living a necessary recollection with absolute naturalness.

Such vigilance over our sight is required in the street, in the environments we frequent, in our social relationships.

And the desirability of the same clear-sightedness applies not only as regards lust, which blinds us both to supernatural goods and to truly human values, but also as regards other fields that can fall into the category of facilitating this concupiscence of the eyes: longing for clothes, longing for things to possess, longing for certain kinds of food or drink.

The concupiscence of the eyes can be active in relation to a very ripe mango, a beautiful ice cream cake, a wonderful smoothie or ice cream soda, a beautiful car—we can feast our eyes on all sorts of things.

God wants us to learn how to control our sight a little bit, to lay the spirit of temperance there, which is a very healthy thing.

We're told in St. Matthew, “The eye is the lamp of the body, so if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness” (Matt. 6:22-23).

Our Lord gives a lot of importance to our eyes. It means we have to be careful of what we let our eyes fall on, of what we see.

If a bad image crops up on the television or in a movie, it's time to look away. Sin only comes with the stage of consent. We may see things, as long as we don't fix our gaze on things.

Looking is not seeing, or seeing is not looking. As long as we don't consent to the bad images, there's no sin there.

It would be sad if we were to lack care in those matters that should cause us to see the face of Christ, not clearly, but only as a blurred and distant image.

“Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8)—not just in the next life, but also in this one. We'll see God in all the daily realities.

In our prayer today, we could examine how we live the guard of the eyes. Many of the saints have talked about ‘guard of the eyes.’ It's vitally necessary if we are to lead a supernatural life, if we are to see God in the ordinary things of every day.

If we don't have clear sight, then we can only have a hazy and often misleadingly deformed vision of things.

The Christian in the middle of the world has to use the necessary means to protect themselves from the huge wave of sensuality and consumerism that in our day seems to be inundating everyone and everything in its path.

We're not afraid of the world, for precisely in the world we received our initial calling to holiness.

We can't run away, because God wants us to be a source of fruitfulness and to have the effect of leaven in the dough in our contemporaries, to lift up the whole of this world, to change it.

St. Josemaría liked to say that we Christians “are an intravenous injection into the bloodstream of society” (Josemaría Escrivá, Letter, March 19, 1934).

But at the same time, to be in the world is not to be frivolous or worldly. We're told in St. John, “I do not pray that you would take them out of the world,” Our Lord said to His Father, “but that you should keep them from the evil one” (John 17:15).

We have to be on our guard, with a real life of prayer, with presence of God.

It's good that we remember the small mortifications that will keep us always alert, but also the big ones that come along when God asks us for them, just as a soldier has to take care not to be overcome by sleep, because so much depends on his watchfulness.

The Apostles warned the converts to the faith to live the doctrine and moral teaching of Christ in a pagan atmosphere—a pagan atmosphere that's rather similar to our own times.

St. Paul says to the Romans, “Night is nearly over, daylight is on the way. So let us throw off everything that belongs to the darkness and equip ourselves for the light” (Rom. 13:12).

If someone were to fail to struggle with determination, then they would be swept away by our environment's climate of materialism and permissiveness.

The widespread toleration of modern lifestyles and a popular approval of standards clearly opposed to the moral demands of the Christian faith and of the natural law are now commonplace, even in countries with a long and deep-seated Christian tradition. Anything goes.

Christ has called each one of us to be a bit of a revolutionary. I was told once the word ‘revolutionary’ occurs something like 250 times in the book, The Way, by St. Josemaría.

We have to be a bit of a rebel to rebel against modern times and customs, not to be willing to live like a pagan.

The influence wielded by the mass media on the opinions of millions that they reach is a vast influence.

In recent years there's been an ever-increasing proliferation of media productions which for all sorts of different reasons—or for no apparent reason at all—encourage a debasement of taste and an escalating concupiscence that leads to many internal and external sins against chastity.

We need to be on our guard; we need to be careful not to be sucked into this virtual vortex.

A soul living in that kind of sensual atmosphere may find it not only difficult, but even impossible, to follow Christ closely, or perhaps even from afar.

We need all the help we can get. We need the sacraments, we need formation, we need our spiritual reading, we need our Rosary.

The indecency and impurity underlying such productions is often accompanied by an attempt to ridicule religion and all the truths of Christianity.

They can make a deliberate exhibition of irreligiosity or atheism, thinking nothing of using obscene and blasphemous language and displaying attitudes of contemptuous irreverence to whatever is sacred.

In their preaching, the Fathers of the Church used hard words to deter the first Christians from attending immoral entertainments and shows.

Those faithful Christians knew how to do without means of recreation that sat ill with their zeal for holiness and could lead their souls into danger.

They were forewarned: you play around with muck, you get muck on you. They avoided such things with ease, since it was obviously what the new ideals they had found required of them when they met Christ.

I heard somebody say once that if a Standard One kid goes out and jumps into a muddy puddle on a wet day, the kid gets dirty rainwater all over him.

If his father at 25 or 35 goes out and jumps into the same puddle, the same thing happens.

If his grandfather at 75 goes out and jumps into the same puddle, he gets dirty water all over him also.

The dirt that dirties a kid is the same dirt that dirties an adult. We shouldn't think ‘I'm old enough now’ or ‘I can handle these situations.’ These things are like water off a duck's back. Well, ducks love water. You have to be careful.

Not infrequently, as a result, the pagans around these first converts would become aware of the conversion of a friend, a relative or a neighbor, because they had stopped attending those shows that did not conform or were openly opposed to the discriminating conscience of a person who has found life in Christ.

One of the Early Fathers of the Church called Tertullian, writing on entertainment, makes this point.

We could ask ourselves, Does anything similar happen to us?

Do our friends or colleagues realize there's something different about us? We don't indulge when everybody else is indulging, or we're a little more careful about the types of entertainment that we expose ourselves to, or the atmosphere that we enjoy ourselves in.

Do they notice that we're protecting our faith and our purity, and that of our children, our younger brothers and sisters, when there's an unsuitable television program?

It's very relevant for us to ask God for a really Christian sensitivity of conscience that will enable us to turn away firmly, unhesitatingly, from anything that would separate us from Him or diminish our zeal to follow Him.

A Christian who's trying to be close to Christ doesn't go to places or shows or watch movies that are incompatible with his state as a disciple of Christ.

Christianity hasn't changed. St. Paul says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8).

He asks of us the same fidelity, the same fortitude and example that He asked of the first disciples.

Very often it takes a lot of fortitude to give example, to stand up and be counted, maybe to let our head be chopped off, for Jesus Christ—to do things not worrying about what people will think, what people will say, but being more concerned about what God will think.

Nowadays we have to row against the current on many occasions. Which is stronger, the reed that stands up against the wind or the reed that is bent by the wind?

We have to try and give that sort of example in our families.

There are certain things we don't bring into our family atmosphere, just like we don't go to a red-light district of the city—‘I don't want our children to go there’—we don't bring the red-light district into our living room, or into our conversations, or into our values.

It might happen that friends or relatives might not understand us at first. But that can often be the first step towards drawing them closer to God, opening their eyes, maybe helping them to decide to live a life that's a deeper Christian life.

Our loyalty to God will lead us to avoid the occasions of danger to our soul, because “the devil is there lurking like a lion ready to pounce” (1 Pet. 5:8).

Before watching a program at home, or a movie, or going out to see something, we have to make sure that what we're going to see would not be an occasion of sin. Get advice about this movie, get some details about it from the Internet, or borrow movies from a very safe source that you know has been edited before.

If there's any doubt in our minds, then the only course for us would be to keep away from such entertainment.

There are many movies and programs that are extremely formative, wholesome, funny, enjoyable, lead our soul, and our life, and our mind, and our heart along those lines.

If we've been badly informed, or attend some show, or see a movie that doesn't match up to our standards, the logical thing to do is to get up and walk out.

We're told in St. Matthew, “If your hand is an occasion of sin to you, cut it off. If your right eye is an occasion of sin to you, pluck it out and throw it away” (Matt. 5:29-30).

The important thing is not to go in the first place, and also to take to our departure without being afraid of appearing strange or in any way unnatural. We can be polite, brief, but we can also be clear and send a message to people.

For a follower of Jesus Christ, what is unnatural is precisely the opposite.

To stay in a place or environment or watching something that's not what it should be—the natural thing is to say no.

To live as real Christians, we have to ask God for fortitude in those moments, so that we don't make any concessions for ourselves.

We want also to speak clearly to others, without worrying about what people will say, even when we think they're not going to understand. Our words, accompanied by our example, and an attitude of certainty and cheerfulness, will help them to understand and look for a more soundly based life, a better formation.

If someone objects that he is immune to the influence of entertainments of this kind, we can point out to them at a suitable time that gradually, imperceptibly, a sort of hard shell is formed around the soul, hindering its intimacy with God, and gradually making it impossible for refinement and respect that all true human love demands.

If someone tells us that no harm is done by going to such places or watching some programs, it may be a clear sign that they need to give them up even more than others. Their eyes are possibly already clouded and their soul hardened as regards the good.

As our followers are apprised to try and give such entertainments a wide berth, they should avoid contributing a single cent towards supporting evil, and do what they can to overcome it.

But they also have to make a positive contribution towards ensuring the existence of healthy, clean entertainments and wholesome attractions that help people rest from work, and give them an opportunity to get to know others, and provide pleasant means of intellectual development, and so on.

St. Joseph was faithful to his vocation as guardian and protector of Jesus and Mary. He loved them with the purest of loves.

We can ask St. Joseph to help us to have the fortitude to go on using the means that will enable us to contemplate God with a clear and penetrating gaze, that we should love our fellow creatures with a deep and clean love according to the particular vocation that we have received.

Mary, Queen of Purity, pray for us.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

MVF