In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Ghost.
We heard today the story of the man born blind. We do
not know from experience what physical blindness is, but we can imagine
how this man was walled in himself, how all the world around him existed
only as a distant sound, something he could not picture, imagine. He was
a prisoner within his own body. He could live by imaginations, he could
invent a world around himself, he could by touch and by hearing
approximate what really was around him; but the total, full reality
could only escape him.
We are not physically blind, but how many of us are
locked in themselves! Who of us can say that he is so open that he can
perceive all the world in its width, but also in its depth? We meet
people, and we see them with our eyes; but seldom it happens that beyond
the outer shape, features, clothes, - how often does it happen that we
see something of the depth of the person? How seldom it is that we look
into a person's eyes and go deep in understanding! We are surrounded by
people and every person is unique to God, but are people unique to us?
Are not people that surround us just ‘people’, who have names, surnames,
nicknames, whom we can recognise by their outer looks but whom we do not
know at any depth?
This is our condition: we are blind, we are deaf, we
are insensitive to the outer world, and yet, we are called to read
meanings. When we meet a person, we should approach this person as a
mystery, that is as something which we can discover only by a deep
communion, by entering into a relationship, perhaps silent, perhaps in
words, but so deep that we can know one another not quite as God knows
us, but in the light of God that enlightens all and each of us.
And more than this: we can do, each within his own
power, within his own gifts, what Christ did: He opened the eyes of this
man. What did this man see? The first thing he saw was the face of the
Incarnate Son of God, in other words, he saw love incarnate. When
his eyes met the eyes of Christ, he met God’s compassion, God’s
tenderness, God’s earnest concern and understanding. In the same way
could so many people begin to see, if by meeting us they meet
people in whose eyes, on whose face they could see the shining of
earnest, sober love, of a love that is not sentimental but is seeing, a
love that can see and understand. And then, how much could we be to
people around us a revelation of all the meanings that this world holds
and contains through art, through beauty, through science, through all
the means by which beauty is perceived and proclaimed among human
beings.
But are we doing this? Is our concern to convey the
width, and the depth, the beauty and the meaning of things to every
person whom we meet? Are we not rather concerned with receiving than
with giving? And yet, Saint Paul who knew what it meant to receive and
to give, said, ‘It is a more blessed thing to give than to receive’. And
yet how much had he received! He had received the knowledge of God in
his own experience; he had received teaching, and knowledge, and
experience within the Old Testament, and then Christ revealed Himself to
him: what did he not receive! And yet, he exulted more in giving
than in receiving, because he did not want to be the owner of all
the richness that had come his way; he wanted to share it, to give it,
to set aglow and afire other lives than his own.
Let us reflect on how rich, how richly endowed we
are, how much it was given us to see, and to hear. And let us realise at
the same time how tragically walled we are within ourselves unless we
break this wall in order to give, as generously, as richly, as
abundantly as we were given. And then indeed, our joy will be fulfilled
according to Christ’s promise. And no one, nothing will ever be
able to take it away from us.
Amen!
