blind-man

Reflection for the 4th Sunday of Lent

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Many years ago people would often ask me whether I thought this person or that person in the seminary was going to make a good priest, and I would readily offer my opinion. I’ve since refused to answer such questions only because I’ve been wrong far too often. This person, who I thought would make a great priest, turned out not to be, and that person who I thought would not last very long turned out to be a fine and committed priest. The fact of the matter is we simply don’t have all the information required to make a secure and accurate judgment, whether we are talking about the quality of future priests or just people in general. We are always information deficient, but we tend not to realize it. We are inclined to believe that “what you see is all there is” (availability heuristic), which is a very pervasive cognitive bias.

I used to teach the Theory of Knowledge to International Baccalaureate students, and when teaching young adults, one has to provide lots of examples, so I began to pay attention to the mistaken inferences that I would make on a daily basis and would use these as examples to illustrate the precarious nature of inductive inference. It is remarkable how many mistaken inferences we typically make every single day, but without realizing it, and that is another common bias of ours–we tend to quickly forget the times we were wrong, but the instances when we were right stand out in our memory like neon lights. Take a simple matter like forming a judgment on why a student has been late to class five days in a row: “Well, because he doesn’t really care about his education”, or “He doesn’t like my class, he’s bored”, etc., and then a short time later we discover that his mother is dying of cancer and he has to take his younger sister to school every morning, so he just can’t manage to get to school on time, let alone concentrate. These things happen all the time with us. 

The first reading is a good illustration of this. David is regarded as having the lowest social standing in his family; his father and brothers thought he was the least likely to be chosen king, so they left him in the fields to do the menial work of a shepherd; he was not even included in the lineup for the prophet Samuel. Of course, this is the person whom God chose to be king of Israel. The Lord said to Samuel with regard to Eliab: “Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, because I have rejected him. Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart.”

One serious problem with human beings is that we don’t like the feeling of not knowing; we insist on the feeling of possessing certain knowledge, which inclines us to settle upon unwarranted conclusions, only to vigorously defend them even when evidence is eventually brought forth that strongly suggests our judgment is mistaken. And so, it is very important to cultivate a healthy skepticism in the face of our own truth claims and remain ready to alter them if evidence demands it. Openness or open-mindedness (docility) is a very important virtue, one not easy to cultivate, especially for religious people, ironically enough.

Consider the judgment that the disciples pronounced on the man born blind, in today’s gospel reading: “As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’” This is a good example of the need to have an answer to a difficult question. Suffering is a great mystery, but it makes things so much easier if we can convince ourselves that this person is suffering misfortune because of his sins or the sins of his ancestors. Suddenly I don’t feel guilty for not making the effort to help this person, after all, his condition is a kind of punishment from God. This is a primitive mode of thinking that has not entirely disappeared. I remember quite clearly a number of people who insisted that the Covid 19 pandemic was a divine chastisement on the world for its sins. But how would one know this? How do we distinguish between the daily misfortunes that befall us personally and those that affect others or the world at large? Is a flat tire a punishment from God? Is a death in the family a punishment from God? Thankfully, Jesus corrected the disciples: “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.”

There’s an old proverb: “There are none so blind as those who will not see”. So much of our mistaken beliefs are rooted in a desire for them to be true, and so we attribute great weight to evidence that confirms them. We see this in the conversation between the man born blind and the Pharisees. They asked him how he was able to see. He told them. They asked him what he thought of the man who opened his eyes. “He is a prophet”, was his reply. 

But they didn’t quite like what they were hearing. In fact, they began to doubt that was born blind, so they called his parents in and asked them. They, however, were astute and knew that if they said something the Pharisees did not want to hear, they would be made to pay in some way. They acknowledged that this was their son and that he was born blind, but to the question: “How does he now see?” they said: “Ask him, he can speak for himself”.  So, the Pharisees called him back again and said: “We know that this man (Jesus) is a sinner.” The man replied: “If he is a sinner, I do not know”. He readily acknowledges his ignorance, but not the Pharisees; in their own eyes, they know. The man continued: “All I know is that I was blind and now I see”. So they asked him again: “How did he open your eyes?” At this point, it is becoming comical. The man said: “I told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?”

The man born blind has a sense of humor, and what he says to the Pharisees at this point is rather brilliant: “This is what is so amazing, that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if one is devout and does his will, he listens to him. It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he would not be able to do anything” (Jn 9, 30-33).

Of course, this is not what the Pharisees wanted to hear, so before throwing him out they managed to assure him of his place: “You were born totally in sin, and are you trying to teach us?” Note the irony. Who is really blind here? Those who will not see. 

St. Paul says that God chooses the weak of this world to shame the strong. To the Corinthians he writes:

Consider your own calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God (1 Cor 1, 26-29).

And of course, the prime example of this is our Blessed Mother, who was nothing in her own eyes: “The Lord has looked upon the nothingness (tapeinōsis) of his handmaiden” (Lk 1, 48). That is why Mary was able to listen to Simeon and the prophet Anna at the Presentation in the temple. She was impressed by what they were saying to her; she could listen to them, because she was not elevated in her own eyes. 

It’s a very dangerous place to be in to see ourselves as something. Like water, God seeks the lowest place–that’s why basements flood, not the upper levels. God is always found in the lowest places. And Mary has the highest place, she is the Queen of Angels, only because she held the lowest place in her own eyes.