Our blindness and our proper vision

UNLESS we see things through Christ who said that he is

the light of the world (cfr Jn 9), we actually cannot see things as

they ought to be seen. If we simply rely on our senses and even on our

intelligence, but without Christ through the exercise of our faith, we

actually are blind. This we have to acknowledge.

            We need to be more aware of this predicament of ours and

start to develop and use the appropriate means to correct, if not

avoid, that delicate situation. We need to be humble and to always

feel the need to be with God even in our most intimate thoughts, let

alone, our words, deeds and public interventions.

            There is actually no other way to correctly and properly

understand and react to things and events in our life. We have to be

wary of our tendency to rely solely on our human estimations of

things, quite independent, if not contrary to the way God understands

them.

            In fact, not only should we be guarded against this

tendency. Rather, we should also actively fight it, converting it into

what is our proper way of thinking, judging and reasoning. And that is

to do all these spiritual operations with God as the main guide and

inspiration.

            The story of the man born blind does not end there. The

coup de grace still had to come. It continues: “Some of the Pharisees

near him heard this, and they said to him, Are we also blind? Jesus

said to them, If you were blind, you would have no guilt, but now that

you say, We see, your guilt remains.”

            We have to be most careful when because perhaps of our

education, our experience, our position, among other things, we feel

that we would already have enough reason to make ourselves our own

standard of what is true, good and beautiful.

            We always need to be like the man born blind, and resist

the attitude of the Pharisees mentioned in the gospel. That’s simply

because it’s when we acknowledge our blindness, deficiency and

inadequacy to tackle our temporal affairs that we attract God’s grace,

his light, his wisdom, his strength.

            That’s when we would know how to live by the ideal of

pursuing the truth in charity. Especially in our contentious issues,

like in politics, we need to see to it that our views and opinions, no

matter how strongly we feel about them, should always be given with

utmost delicacy.

            We would be quick to understand others in their opposing

positions, and would know how to derive some good and benefits from

them. We would know how to be open-minded and tolerant even as we

express our opinions too.

            To be like the Pharisees mentioned in the gospel is to

make ourselves and no one and nothing else to be the standard of truth

and fairness. We become rigid and closed-minded, prone to dogmatizing

opinions, absolutizing what only have relative value.

            It’s always good to acknowledge our blindness so we can

see things clearly through God’s grace.