The Branches 04-01-2025

“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  (John 9:2)

April 1, 2025

Hello Everyone –

Throughout the annual season of Lent, we have a host of individuals who accompany us not only on the road to Easter but also into the depths of ourselves as we seek to be inwardly renewed.
 
Among them is a particular favorite of mine — the man blind from birth (John 9:1-41). You may recall that at the beginning of the passage the disciples of Jesus put the above-cited question to him about who is to blame for the man’s blindness.
 
In response, Jesus craftily employs an age-old teaching tool, namely:
• first, you tell them what you’re going to tell them;
• then, you tell them;
• finally, you tell them what you told them.
And, hopefully through this process of repetition, the student learns.
 
However, it quickly becomes apparent in the passage in question that the Pharisees refuse to learn — and sometimes we do, too. Spiritual blindness can be a daunting malady.
 
What does Jesus do?
First: Jesus informs his disciples that the man was born blind — “so that the works of God might be made visible through him.”
Next: Jesus informs the disciples that he is “the light of the world.”  To reinforce this statement — he spits on the ground — makes clay — smears it on the eyes of the man blind from birth — sends him to the pool to wash — and the man can see.
Finally: Jesus finds the man who has received the gift of sight — asks him if he believes in the Son of Man — and tells the man, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.”
 
So, what is Jesus trying to teach us? The blind man’s healing becomes a manifestation of God’s goodness and grace. It has absolutely nothing to do with whose sin it was that caused the man to be born blind. No pointing of fingers — no judgment or condemnation.
 
But the Pharisees simply do not get it. They are just as blind at the end of the encounter as they were at the beginning — perhaps even worse because they had an opportunity to finally have their eyes opened through faith, but they refused.
 
For the evangelist John, “seeing is not believing” — rather “believing is seeing.”  It is faith that leads us to insight. The Pharisees object to the notion that they are blind — believing that they “see” better than others. However, Jesus reacts to their insistence that they see clearly — given their refusal to appreciate what has happened to the man blind from birth. Jesus recognizes this as a sign that their minds are made up — and that no facts will change them — to which he pronounces the unsettling judgment that their sin remains.
 
We now find ourselves over halfway through the Lenten season. So, let us be challenged to address our own tendencies toward spiritual blindness by the lesson of the man whose sight was restored.
 
At the start of this particular Gospel story, when first questioned about his healing, the man blind from birth describes the healer as “the man called Jesus,”  then later on as a “prophet,” — and finally, when Jesus finds him after he was put out of the synagogue, the seeing man professes belief in Jesus as the “Son of Man” and “Lord.”  What is essential to his journey of faith was his ability — no doubt through grace — to grow in understanding of who Jesus is — and not just what Jesus had done.
 
Christ calls each of us to a new understanding of faith by challenging us to move beyond the limited vision of our human tendencies to a place where we ourselves become instruments of light for the world in which we live.
 

As I do for you, please pray for me,

Most Reverend Jeffrey S. Grob
Archbishop of Milwaukee

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