LIGHT
Light is a constant theme in St John’s gospel, and especially that Jesus is ‘the light of the world’. Light is also the theme in today’s reading from the letter to the Ephesians, where the audience is encouraged to live openly and avoid dishonest deeds done in the dark. And if we go back to the very beginning of creation, the first thing is ‘let there be light’. Literally, without light, life could not exist.
In the gospel for today, St John tells the story of Jesus healing a man born blind. It’s a long story and a lot could be said about it. The first thing that strikes me is the question the disciples put to Jesus: whose sin caused this man to be born blind? Jesus’ answer, remarkable in the context, is that no one sinned. Illness, misfortune, and natural disaster are not the result of sin. We might think that to suggest otherwise is a quaint relic of simpler times but perhaps we, too, when things don’t go right, might dwell on how unfair life is. Jesus says that the point is that the blind man’s situation can instead become a vehicle for the works of God.
The poet James K. Baxter wrote a long time ago that we ‘live in an uncontrollable universe which is, in a hidden fashion, under the control of God’. And so the story continues. Jesus heals the man, and people don’t know what to do with him. They seem to be asking, ‘what’s the catch here’? Some, convinced that Jesus is up to no good, seem to bend over backwards to deny that something good has happened. Against that the healed man responds in plain, even feisty, terms. He is in no doubt that what has happened has come from God. Maybe we all need to be open to the evidence of God’s goodness.
Pope Francis wrote that ‘Nature is filled with words of love, but how can we listen to them amid constant noise, interminable and nerve-wracking distractions, or the cult of appearances?’. But we also need, as one of the eucharistic prayers which we often use says, to have our eyes opened to the needs of our sisters and brothers. For St John also wrote that Jesus was the light of all people, the light that shines in the darkness and cannot be overcome. We too need to be bearers of that light.
Jim McAloon
