Blindness

The Holy Father recently updated a prayer in the extraordinary form of the Good Friday Liturgy for people of the Jewish faith. The previous version of the prayer had spoken of their “blindness”. This had given rise to some controversy and the Holy Father chose prudentially to revise it to focus on praying that the Jews “acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men” – which is the most important point.

I categorically and unreservedly support the Holy Father’s change.

We should also keep in mind that the previous version of the prayer evidenced the Church’s sincere love and concern for people of the Jewish faith and that the metaphors were scripturally derived.

Indeed, today’s Gospel (John 9:1-41) explores the reality and the metaphor of blindness (among many other things) in wonderful ways.

As a matter of fact, the dialogue between our Lord and the Pharisees at the end of the Gospel’s long form almost seem to echo the objections to the previous version of the Good Friday prayer.

Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this
and said to him, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?”

Jesus said to them,
“If you were blind, you would have no sin;
but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.

A key point to understanding what our Lord says here, as well as to understanding the previous version of the Good Friday prayers, is that spiritual blindness is not an impairment suffered only by the Pharisees of old or by people of the Jewish faith today.

What our Lord said to the Pharisees, he also says to us.

You are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.

First of all, you and I may consider ourselves intelligent – and not without some justification – but we must always remember how intellectual pride so often results in intellectual folly.

We as individuals and as humanity know things, but we do not know everything – not even regarding the things of this world and certainly not regarding the things of God and the world without end.

When we think and act as if we see and know more than we actually do, it is then that we are likely to stumble and fall.

You are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.

In humility and in realism, all of us – Jew or Gentile, educated or unlearned – need always to ask the Lord to remove our blindness and enable us to see more and more of what exists, most especially spiritual realities.

Secondly, to speak more specifically, our most dangerous blindness is to our own sins: most especially our sins of omission and sins shrouded in our long-wrought compromises.

You are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, be merciful to me – a sinner.

We need to ask the Lord continually to heal our blindness: that we may recognize our sins and by his grace overcome them to do what is truly right.

Jew or Gentile, educated or unlearned, long devoted to the Lord or just feeling the grace of conversion, all of us should ask for this blindess to be removed from us and we should also heed the words of Saint Paul in today’s second reading (Ephesians 5:8-14):

You were once darkness,
but now you are light in the Lord.

Live as children of light,
for light produces every kind of goodness
and righteousness and truth.

Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.
Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness;
rather expose them,
for it is shameful even to mention
the things done by them in secret;
but everything exposed by the light
becomes visible,
for everything that becomes visible is light.

Therefore, it says:
“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will give you light.”