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March 19, 2023: Healthy Spiritual Sight
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We all know someone – be it ourselves or someone else – who has some part of the human anatomy that is not working up to snuff. Be it hearing, sight, smell, taste, inability to walk as well as we once did, not hitting a golf ball as far as we once used to, not lifting an amount of weight as days of not so long ago. I remember Fr. Foley used to joke about all the metal he has inside his body, that going through a metal detector at an airport was impossible without being checked over two or three times before they let him pass. He was treated liked he belonged to the Irish Republican Army. Many times such bodily deficiencies come with age. That would be true for most folks as we get older. Other times there are people who are born with a deficiency of the anatomy. Such as the man who is at the center of this week’s Gospel, simply known as the man born blind.
A fact of life is gradually watching, even in the smallest ways, the downgrading, if you will, of some part of our bodies. This is why great athletes, even the world-famous Tom Brady, are forced to retire in their forties, if they make it that far. There is always some young athlete, in female or male sports, who is ready to take the place of one who has made the team years before them, be it amateur or professional sports, and send the elder athlete out to pasture for good. Treating them like a race horse with a broken leg.
It would actually be nice to say this is the case with the priesthood of Jesus Christ, where there are abundant young vocations to take the place of older priests who retire, not pushing them aside, but allowing them to retire with a sense of peace knowing that others will be called to do God’s work in priestly ministry after them, but…. That would not be the case today, at least not in the United States. There are a few Dioceses that flourish with vocations in this country, allowing for younger priests to take over for those who are affectionately called “veterans of the campaign,” such as our own Fr. Paul. But very few Dioceses can make such a claim. This deficiency in the Body of Christ is well spread throughout our country, as many priests would rightly say that we in the United States have become “mission territory” once again, due to the lack of vocations.
I have a priest friend with whom I was with in seminary who belongs to the Diocese of Portland, Maine, which covers the entire state of Maine. Maine, as you probably know, is not a small state in the Union. It is rather large territory-wise. My friend, Fr. Kent Ouellette, is now in the northern most reaches of Maine in the Madawaska area close to the St. Lawrence River. He’s assigned as Pastor with an Associate Pastor and a retired priest or two to potentially assist. Fr. Kent covers seven Churches, drives about 200 miles each weekend to go from one place to another, and I must say does it without complaint. This is not unusual for priests in Maine, right up the road from us. They live a totally different dynamic than we do here in the Diocese of Worcester, which can probably fit into the Diocese of Portland, Maine a hundred times over land-wise. The point here, again, being a lack of deficiency, in this matter, the Body of Christ.
On a personal level, we all lack some deficiency in our bodies. Even the greatest athletes, women and men who we tend to think have perfect bodies, do not have perfect bodies. There is something lacking in them, even if it happens to be the inability to live forever in this place. There is planted within them the seed of mortality lurking and floating in their sleek bodies, moving left and right, up and down, searching for that moment when some health hazard can be thrust upon them, compromising their so-called perfect health. Please don’t get me wrong here. I’m not wishing this on anyone, even anyone from the New York Yankees. We should all know that God does not work in this way. God’s work is that of love, albeit, at times manifested in tough ways, like Jesus did to the Samaritan Woman in last week’s Gospel. Her deficiency was the lack of healthy, Godly relationships in her life. What did Jesus do? He called her to conversion through faith in him before all others. He fixed her soul, and she allowed her soul to be fixed. This is a great lesson for the many arrogant, egomaniacal folks walking around out there nowadays. At times, this would be yours truly, which is how I know. Allowing ourselves to be humbled by the Lord, who humbles in order that we may exalted, filling up a deficiency in our souls and attitudes is a good choice on our part.
I sense at times we raise our bodily deficiencies above that of our spiritual ones. Undoubtedly, we want healthy bodies to enjoy, if nothing else, the good things that God created in this world. To be able to travel to France in November (we still need some more folks to join us); to travel to other places we enjoy so much, be it the ocean, mountains, and yes, Gettysburg or other Civil War sites. Just being blessed with a day to enjoy without the overburdening of health concerns. Such days are priceless, if they happen at all, which they do not for many folks. As they say, we learn to live with certain physical conditions, which is true enough. But how about a day where there’s no physical interference with health matters? I guess the answer is, “Bring on heaven.” St. Paul experienced untold amounts of suffering, providing us a long list of Christian assaults and happenings upon his body in 2nd Corinthians. Any Bible reader who reads his list in chapter 11 can only conclude, “Here’s a guy who can’t wait for heaven to arrive.”
However, as we grow older and hopefully wiser, we realize at some poignant point that our spiritual deficiencies are lots more important to our lives than that of the physical ones. A thousand times more important. This is what we address in the season of Lent, hopefully putting our best foot forward to do so. The first answer that concerns the all-important matter of spiritual deficiency is God’s grace, God’s favor, accepting God’s unconditional love for each of us as persons made in his image and likeness. The difference between any physical pain we experience because of a physical deficiency in our bodies, and that of spiritual deficiencies within our souls, is not all that different. Pain is pain, and a certain lacking, be it physical or spiritual, creates a painful void in the fullness of our personhood. A physical deficiency is settled, temporarily, through good medical care or a direct miracle from God. The Saints are constantly working on the latter for us, as well as the former too. A spiritual deficiency, on the other hand, mainly sin, is settled through the immeasurable grace of reception of the Sacraments for us Catholics. Notably the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and after this reception, the holiest reception of the Body & Blood of Christ Jesus in the Eucharist. This is also known as receiving grace upon grace.
In the Gospel this week from John, the man born blind tells Jesus, “I want to see.” There is no question he was referring to his physical sight. Something within told him that sight was a good thing to have. There’s the old adage, “We don’t miss what we don’t know.” This is true, for those who truly don’t know. But a spiritual sense of how good physical sight is was roaming around in the head and heart of the man born blind. It is true he did not know for certain that sight was a genuine good, a gift from God as part of the human anatomy. But he understood well enough that a deficiency in the human body, in his body, was cause for wanting it badly enough to say to Jesus, “I want to see.” And Jesus. who is the light of the world, would just as soon pass up on this offer to plant the gift of sight in this man than he would have passed up on walking out of the tomb on Easter Sunday morning. In other words, passing up on the man’s offer of restoring his sight was not possible for God who stood before him.
With that said, our Lord Jesus gives the man born blind more than physical sight. Christ gives the guy more than he asked for, which God is good at doing. Receiving the gift of his physical sight was only the beginning of what the man born blind was to gain that day. If the gift Jesus gave him of visual sight that could now see people, creation, Roman soldiers, the Temple, and the face of Christ was a great gift, how greater is the gift when the miracle included spiritual sight too? When God gives a gift, such as sight, God’s action upon his children will include the entire meaning of the word “sight,” which is certainly not limited to the physical. As much as the Lord grants physical sight to the man, it is only possible for the Lord to touch the person receiving his miraculous gift in the whole of what makes up the human person as connected to the word “sight.” Any and all deficiencies regarding sight were restored that day to the man born blind. He not only now saw physically, but he also fully saw spiritually, thus, becoming a disciple of Jesus.
As we move closer to Holy Week and the high point of the Church year, may we be blessed with the understanding and wisdom of the higher importance of spiritual sight in our lives. We all have our physical and spiritual deficiencies. But healthy spiritual sight is what brings us to the Divine promises that await in the land of life eternal.