Fourth Sunday of Lent – A
Gospel: John 9: 1 – 41 – The Healing of a Man Born Blind
The Homily
The decade of the 1980′s ushered in a new era that will never be forgotten in our human history. It was the dawn of the deadly HIV/AIDS epidemic which has claimed millions of lives and devastated countless families and communities around the globe.
In the early years of the epidemic, everyone was so ignorant and blind about the disease. We had no idea how it started or what causes it until substantial research was conducted. But even up to day, there is still controversy about the real cause of AIDS (for some people it is denial).
Almost anywhere in the world, AIDS victims were ostracised from society just like the blind man, the beggars, or lepers were in society of Jesus’ time. In the early days of AIDS in Africa, the victims were thought to have committed some atrocious crimes. It was a lot of stigma for the family. People in the community would say that, that family was cursed and started excluding them. As a result, when someone in the family started showing symptoms of AIDS, the family hid the patient and people would only know about it when the person is about to die yet the patient had been bedridden for months and months. No one would even dare acknowledge openly that a loved died of AIDS. Sometimes even the family shunned the person in anger that he or she has brought a curse to the family or in fear that if they touch him or things the patient has used, they will get the disease too.
Here in the United States, some people saw AIDS as a disease for the gay people. Actually, this belief still holds in some people today. We could easily dismiss them as outcasts… “God is punishing them for their immorality.” Yet still, others in the West, would see AIDS as an African problem because they would conclude, “Africans are promiscuous; so, they are paying for their sins.”
In a world of cause and effect, we could not imagine how someone could be tormented with such a terrible disease if indeed they are good and upright people. So, we conclude, “they must have done something terrible.” By the time our eyes opened to recognize that AIDS was neither an exclusively African nor gay problem, it was too late, and it had become a global menace with over 40 million people living with the virus today.
“Rabbai, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). Even the disciples were ‘blind’ and caught up in this culture of cause and effect. There had to be an explainable cause. God can’t punish a good person. If this man was born blind, definitely his parents must have done something terrible. They must have sinned. The disciples and others in the neighbourhood could not see beyond this point.
Even for us today, it is hard to understand why a good person can face so much suffering or death or pain. We quickly turn to finding quick cause and effect answers. We become blind to the mystery of death and suffering and we seek to find someone to blame or some logical explanations to fit our limited framework of understanding.
If you drive through any of our cities today, you can’t miss laying your eyes on a similar scene John presents us in the gospel. There are blind people on the streets begging. There are poor people and others who are physically or mentally handicap all over the place. I was shocked when I had just come to America driving through Washington, DC seeing so many people on the streets begging. It is these very people that are also so vulnerable to AIDS. We can be tempted to easily cast stones saying “those people are just lazy; they don’t want to work; they messed up their lives; that’s why they are beggars.”
In a way, we claim that, we, who are physically and mentally health, economically well off, and have education – a real good life, that we somehow deserve what we have and boast that we have worked hard to be who we are and what we are. Our pride blinds us from recognizing that who we are and what we have is by mercy and grace of God. All of our being and our possession are total gift from God. The only effort we can credit ourselves is the openness to respond to God’s will. Saint Paul recognizes this reality and affirms that I am what I am because of grace of God (1 Cor. 15:10).
Although we cannot ignore our culpability for our wrong doing and responsibility in being good stewards of the gifts and resources God has given us to better our world, we have to acknowledge that goodness, suffering, and death are mysteries only understood by God. They all unfold within the realm of God’s active presence in our world.
It is through these mysteries of goodness, evil, suffering, death and others that God manifests himself to us—his mercy, grace, compassion, and life-giving power. Christ reminds us of this reality in the gospel: “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him” (John 9:3). Through his healing ministry, his miracles, his compassion, his forgiveness, Jesus manifested the glory of the Father.
We don’t only see his glory in countering evil or suffering as in healings but also in all good moments such as the wedding feast at Cana where Jesus provides great wine out of water (John 2) and in the feeding of the crowd of five thousand people (John 6). We see this glory and power in the beauty of all the creation all around us.
Jesus as the light of the world (John 9:5), helps us, if we are ready to allow him to open our eyes to this light, to see the glory of God in our lives. This is manifested in our good health, in the love and care we receive from other, in our ingenuity, in our successes, in our education, in our good jobs, and in all those good things of life we enjoy every day. And in a mysterious way, He also reveals himself in the young man dying of AIDS, in a blind beggar on the streets of Washington, DC, in the homeless teenager on the streets of Pittsburgh, and in a mother of three little children fighting terminal cancer. It easier to say here than to believe when you are actually caught up in midst of one of these life-threatening conditions. But the truth remains, God is always amidst of this unimaginable suffering.
Just as we do not deserve all the good things we have in our lives, the AIDS patient, the blind man, the mentally and physically handicap, the poor beggars, do not deserve the suffering they are enduring. These realities are mysteries we have to leave to God and pray for the grace to humble ourselves whether in suffering or goodness to allow the spirit to guide us in search for closer union with the Son who can show us the light—the light of truth that persists in goodness and suffering. Our quick answers in the mindset of cause and effect simply alienate us from the true light and perpetuate prejudices, apathy, and divisions in society.
However, to be able to have this recognition of God’s active presence in our world, amidst goodness, evil and suffering, we have to open our hearts to the truth and allow the spirit to lead us. We have to accept and receive Christ into our lives like the blind man did. It was not only his physical blindness that was healed but also his spiritual blindness. He was able to see the light inside and outside and came to a profession of “I do believe, Lord” (John 9:38).
Brethren, as we trek ahead on our Lenten journey through this fourth week, it is an opportune time for us to reflect back at our “I do believe” we professed at Baptism and the many different “I dos” we have made at confirmation, at matrimony, at ordination or religious profession. Are these ‘I dos’ still strong as the day we made them? Are still faithful to the promises we made? Have we lost sight of the path we started because of our blindness? We can ask ourselves, which areas of my life I am I being blind to the truth or reality of others’ lives around me?
It may be a good time to ask he, who is the light of the world to open the eyes of our body and eyes of our souls so we can daily renew our ‘I dos’ and get back on the right path that God wants us to take—in ways that glorify Him and in solidarity with our brothers and sisters suffering spiritual blindness, physical blindness, and all those plagued with heinous diseases like AIDS and others sorts of suffering in our world today. We may consider offering our prayers and fasts during this season for them, and where possible, reaching out to them in various ministries of the Church and civil society.
© John Mary Lugemwa, OSB