One of the incredible privileges of priesthood…something I’ve mentioned before…is being able to walk with people and families during the most important moments of their lives. So many of those experiences are joyful: baptisms, weddings, the good news of a surgery going well, or the healthy birth of a baby. In the course of a single week of priestly ministry, you often witness the whole cycle of human life. And many nights, before I go to bed, I simply thank God for allowing me to be some small part of those moments.
But of course, there are also the difficult moments. Perhaps a parishioner’s loved one dies suddenly, someone receives a devastating diagnosis or a child becomes seriously ill. In those painful situations, almost everyone eventually asks the same question. “Why?” Why is this happening? Whose fault is this? What did I do to deserve this?
It’s a very human reaction. When we encounter suffering, in our own lives or in the lives of people we love, our instinct is to look for someone or something to blame. Even though we rarely get a satisfying answer, we keep asking that question over and over again.
That is exactly the question the disciples ask in today’s Gospel. Jesus and his disciples pass by a man who was born blind, and the disciples immediately assume there must be a moral failure to blame. “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” In other words, they are posing the same question we often ask: Whose fault is this?
But Jesus gently shows them that they are asking the wrong question. “It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be made visible through him.” Jesus is teaching his disciples…and us…that when we encounter suffering, the first question should not be why did this happen or who is to blame. The better question is: What is God going to do here? And how can I help reveal God’s goodness in this situation? That is a completely different way of looking at the world.
The first reading today hints at the same truth. When Samuel goes to choose the next king of Israel, he assumes the oldest, strongest, and most impressive-looking sons of Jesse must be the ones God wants. But the Lord corrects him with those famous words: “Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart.” Human beings look at the surface. God sees the deeper story.
From a human perspective, the man in today’s Gospel looked like a tragedy. He was blind from birth. In that culture, he would have been pushed to the margins of society, assumed to be cursed or punished by God. But Jesus sees something completely different. He sees a man whose life will reveal the glory of God. Jesus heals him but the miracle goes even deeper than that. Once he receives his sight, the man becomes a witness. The very people who thought they had nothing to learn…the religious authorities, the experts…are challenged by the faith of the man who had once been blind.
The irony of the Gospel is wonderful! The man who was physically blind sees clearly who Jesus is. Meanwhile, the Pharisees, whose eyes function fine, remain blind in their hearts. If we’re not careful, that same blindness can creep into our own lives. Far too often we look at people the way the disciples first did. We see someone struggling, someone who has made mistakes, someone who seems broken or lost and we assume their affliction is due to their guilt. But none of us can see into another person’s heart.
Only God has that power and insight. When Jesus looks at a person…when he looks at you and me…he does not see a failure or someone beyond hope. He sees a person capable of holiness, someone whose life can reveal the glory of God. Which brings us back to the question Jesus is teaching us to ask.
Instead of asking “Why is this happening?”, he invites us to ask: “How can the works of God be made visible here?” When someone we love is suffering, the question is not simply why. The question becomes: How can God bring grace out of this moment? When we encounter someone who seems broken or lost, the question is not what went wrong with them. The question becomes: What does God see in this person that I may be missing? And when we face struggles in our own lives, the question is not why me but rather: How might God be working through this in ways I cannot yet see?
Faith doesn’t always give us the answer to the “why.” But it does teach us where to look. It teaches us to look for the work of God, even in places where the world only sees darkness. It lays the foundation for the hope and expectation that whatever we are suffering is no match for the saving power of God. That hope is at the heart of our faith and the beginning of miracles. Nothing…not sickness, not suffering, not even death itself…is stronger than the power of God. The resurrection of Jesus proves that.
Today’s Gospel invites us to pray for something very simple: the gift of clear, spiritual sight. The ability to see people as God sees them. The ability to trust that even in the darkest moments of life, God is still at work. The ability to recognize the work of God even when it appears in the most unexpected places. The real tragedy in today’s Gospel wasn’t the man who was born blind. The real tragedy was the people who could see but refused to recognize the work of God standing right in front of them. Let’s make sure we don’t become one of them but instead serve as witnesses to Jesus’ infinite power over the pain, suffering, and darkness of this world!
