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In the constant anomalies of the Restoration publication schedule, I am writing this March article, which will reach you in Lent, on January 3.

Christmas is still in full swing in Madonna House (we celebrate the 12 days), and the room in which I am writing is liberally festooned with garlands, lights, and giant hanging origami stars. Hello from Christmas, Lenten readers!

Because of this, the new year of 2020 is still fresh enough that jokes about a “year of renewed vision,” and having “gospel eyes” are still being heard around here. One of our priests is telling everyone that the optometrists will be put out of business, as everyone this year has 20/20 (normal) vision.

All of which brings me (naturally!) to the 4th Sunday of Lent on March 22, and the account of the healing of the man born blind from John 9. What a story it is! Really unique among all the miracles Jesus worked.

Every other miraculous healing Jesus works follows a more or less similar track—here’s someone with some kind of affliction; they meet Jesus; Jesus heals them; the crowd goes wild with admiration and awe.

At most, there might be some objection raised by some about the Sabbath or some such thing, but the general response is positive. And there’s not a whole lot of follow-up to the story, either.

In this story, the first three parts go off without a hitch but then… the crowd goes wild all right, but not the way one might expect. There is virtually a criminal trial of the poor man who obediently had mud rubbed in his eyes (ouch!), went and washed as instructed, and came back seeing (v. 7).

Well, this is no good at all, according to the Pharisees. Is it even the same man? Is someone pulling a fast one here? Who is this Jesus, anyhow? Division, controversy (in Greek, they are in “schism” about it all). And—did you notice?—Jesus is nowhere to be found through it all, not until the very end of the Gospel.

No, there’s just this man, once blind, now seeing, and initially not knowing much more about it than that—oh yeah, and that some guy named Jesus did it. Until he is pushed and prodded and challenged and attacked repeatedly on the point, that is.

Then he first confesses Jesus to be a prophet (v. 17), then himself as His disciple (v. 27), then Jesus as being from God (v. 33), then finally when he does for the first time see Him with his own new eyes, as one to be worshipped (v. 38).

20/20 vision, Gospel style! John 9 is a profound theological presentation of what it means to see, truly. The blind man’s physical sight is healed, but that’s neither here nor there, in the bigger picture of things.

After all, the Pharisees can all see perfectly fine, as they themselves testify (v. 40). But on the level that really matters, they can’t see their hands in front of their faces, so to speak.

A man has been healed in an astounding way (never has it been known… v. 32). And they are unable to see it, unable to take in a fact of such enormous import, such overwhelming evidence of God’s power at work in this man.

The blind man, who has “seen” nothing of Jesus at this point, sees Jesus—and hence, sees truly—more clearly than they who have already been disputing with Him face to face.

To see is to see Jesus. To be unable to, incapable of seeing Jesus, is to be blind. This is the plain and simple message of the Gospel today. What does that mean for us?

Well we, like the man born blind, have not “seen” Jesus with our own eyes yet, have we? We live in a world where we have all been touched by His grace, anointed by His Spirit, bathed clean in His living waters, fed by His living bread, and yet we open our eyes daily to a world where we see Him not.

They have taken my Lord away, and I do not know where they have put Him (John 20:13). The Blessed Sacrament is always with us, true, but we do not exactly “see” Jesus there, so much as we believe in His real presence.

But ah—that’s the point, isn’t it? Seeing is believing, the cynical among us say. Talk is cheap—show me the goods. But in our Christian understanding the inverse is true. Believing is seeing. Like the blind man, we have never “seen” Jesus in the flesh, but the effects of His actions in our life testify to His goodness, His power, His love, and we put our faith in that, and in him.

Believing is seeing, and to see Jesus truly is to be in relationship with Him truly, for He is Truth itself. And to be in relationship with Christ is to live and not die, to be and not perish. Seeing is not believing, but seeing is being, seeing is living.

Seeing is loving: to see is to fall in love with Love itself (so beautiful we cannot help but love Him), which is the power of life that is stronger than death.

This “seeing”—so mysterious, as we simultaneously do not see Him, even as we see Him—comes on the heels of faith, is strengthened by the confession of our lips, by holding fast to the truth we know in times of affliction, opposition, doubt, suffering, just as it was for the man born blind. Only when he was cast out of the synagogue did his full vision return to him in the final encounter with Jesus.

For us, our full vision is restored only when we too pass through great valleys of affliction and fiery furnaces of doubt and distress, ultimately through the final anguish of our death to see him at last face to face.

So it is 2020, and the word of life is indeed a word of seeing for us, a word that opens our eyes to the Reality that is above, beneath, around, and filling all reality. From my vantage point in the New Year I wish you all in Lent a season of renewed vision, healed sight. Above all, a season of encounter with Christ who is being, life, and love for us all.

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