Imagine being born blind. Not just having poor eyesight and needing glasses, but actually never having seen a sunrise, never having seen your mother’s face as you were growing up, never having read a single word in a book and being able to watch a movie. You would only be able to learn the world by touch, sound and smell – by the warmth of a hand, the vibration of your footsteps, the texture of bread. That was the experience of the man in today’s Gospel. He was born blind.

We might get some pity in today’s society, if we were born blind. People might open doors for us or help us cross the street. But not this man born blind. He is treated like a theological puzzle: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?”.

Helen Keller helps us enter into the world this man lived in. Helen was not born blind, but she lost sight and hearing as a toddler and later described her early years as being like living “at sea in a dense fog”. Through patient love – especially through her teacher Anne Sullivan, Helen learned how to name objects, how to communicate, and slowly a whole new world opened up for her. She could not get there on her own. She needed a teacher who could understand her pain, accept her limitations, see her dignity and potential, love her as she is and lead her to discover how to communicate, how to experience the world around her and be able to finally live in deeper relationship with others.

What this great teacher Anne Sullivan did for Helen Keller, Jesus did in a much greater way for this man born blind. With mud and saliva and a command to wash, Jesus healed this man’s physical blindness.

That would have already been a great story to tell, but the story does not end there. Jesus wants to give much more than physical sight. He wants to give us spiritual sight to discover the wonders God is doing. Physical blindness is a terrible handicap, but there is a kind of blindness that has nothing to do with our physical eyes. It’s possible to have perfect physical vision and still not see God standing in front of us.

Spiritual blindness is the worst kind of blindness there is. It’s when we cannot recognize grace, even when it’s obvious. It’s when we interpret everything through the lens of suspicion, pride or prejudice. It’s when we already “know” the conclusion, so we refuse any evidence that might convert us. The ironic thing about today’s Gospel is that the story begins with a blind man who starts to see, and ends with “alleged seers” who remain blind in soul. These “alleged seers” think they already have the light, but don’t recognize Jesus as the Light of the world.

That’s the tragedy of the Pharisees in this passage. They are intelligent, religious, serious people, who are spiritually stuck. They can analyse the miracle ,interrogate witnesses and cite regulations, but they cannot recognize the obvious – God has worked a miracle here. Their hearts have become like windows painted black. No matter how bright the sun, nothing gets through.

Meanwhile, the healed man gives us one of the best lines in Scripture, which was in part put to music in the well-known song Amazing Grace: “All I know is this: I was blind and now I see…If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” For him the miracle moves from sight to faith, from “the man called Jesus” to“ Lord, I believe.”

Pope Benedict XVI called Jesus “the Light of the world” who opens our eyes to faith and heals us from “the darkness of confusion and sin” (Angelus, 2 March 2008).Confusion is intellectual fog. Sin is moral darkness. Many people suffer both – they don’t see clearly and don’t love purely.

The saints show us what “seeing” looks like. St Paul was physically blinded when he was knocked down on the road to Damascus, and then, through baptism, was given light. His temporary blindness became a mercy, because it shattered his false certainty and made room for Christ. Pope Francis once described Paul’s passage as a journey “from darkness to light” (Homily 6 May 2020). St Teresa of Calcutta heard Jesus say: “Come, be My light”. She spent her life teaching the world to see: to see Christ hidden in the Eucharist and hidden in the poor, to see dignity where the world sees inconvenience.

Today, as we hear this Gospel, we are not just watching a miracle happen to someone else. We are invited to pray for our own miracle: “Jesus, Light of the world, please touch the places in my mind and heart that are proud, fearful, resentful and closed. Give me the courage to say with the healed man: ‘Lord, I believe’. Give me the faith to see your love at work in the details of my life and help me to see each person I meet as a real brother and sister.” What a grace to be able to see with our physical eyes, but what an even great grace to see and recognize the Lord with the eyes of faith. To finish, here’s a memorable quote from Helen Keller: "Better to be blind and see with your heart, than to have two good eyes and see nothing."

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On the Third, Fourth and Fifth Sundays of Lent in Year A (and in every year when there are candidates for Baptism in the Community) the three Johannine narratives of the Woman of Samaria, the Man Born Blind and Lazarus, are read, and coupled with a proper Preface. These prefaces form a concise and beautiful summary of the symbolism of each Gospel narrative.   

In today’s Preface, the narrative of the Man born Blind is revealed as a sign of the coming of the Light of Christ in the Incarnation and the mysteries of Christian Initiation (which used to be known also as ‘Illumination’) where the contrast between light, which is faith, and the darkness in which we once walked is paralleled by the redemptive imagery of Baptism.

Many communities will also want to remember ‘Mothering Sunday’ today. This seems to have had some link with the Entrance Antiphon of the Mass, and particularly with the Epistle in the Old Rite of Mass for this day from Galatians 4: ‘Jerusalem, the Mother of us all.’

For the General Intercessions:

That the Lord may open the eyes of all peoples

to the wonder of God’s coming, and God’s continuing work among us.

‘God of steadfast love,

you cradle us at birth,

embrace us at our life’s end

and welcome us into your eternal home.

Let such a tenderness move us

to love you in return

and draw others into the circle of your care.’

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The hymns below have been chosen from different sources:

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Rejoice the Lord is King (CFE619, L326)

Amazing grace (CFE40, L846, LHON131, TCH203)

Thou whose almighty Word (CFE738, L887, LHON689, TCH269)

The light of Christ (CFE703, L747, LHON657)

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‍ Key

CFE - Celebration Hymnal for Everyone

L – Laudate

LHON – Liturgical Hymns Old and New (Mayhew, 1999)

TCH – The Catholic Hymnbook (Gracewing)