![]() What is said comes to light in the person’s wisdom, Christlike works of charity. A place where God speaks to the soul in language the intellect cannot comprehend. Contemplation the very conscious search for God begins with charity arrives at a deep silence in the dark of interior night. Darkness understood as shrouding the world, distancing from the sensual. For the contemplative darkness not Darkness is the place to find Christ. A devotee of John of the Cross The Living Flame of Love leans heavily on this contrast used by Christ. Jesus in turn seizes this darkness to reveal the Father’s glory. A man born blind, handicapped was often thought inflicted by a parent’s sin as indicated. Perusing this article ‘I’ was taken by light darkness contrast. 9:17)-and not just any prophet, but one sent from God (Jn 9:33). But that is just the beginning of the miracle of sight, for he will soon recognize, through spiritual eyes, that the man called Jesus (Jn 9:11) is also a prophet (Jn. Upon having spittle applied to eyes and being told to go wash in the pool of Siloam, the blind man obeys. The key question for every man is simply this: Do you really want to see? The Evangelist, in depicting the various responses to Jesus’ word and actions, reveals the clear divisions created by Christ and that His words and deeds demand an honest response. Analogously, spiritual blindness consists of being separated from the life and grace of God-that divine “society” of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All of us, like the blind man, are unable to heal ourselves desiring to see, we stumble about in darkness and misery.īlindness in first-century Palestine meant being almost entirely cut off from the ordinary life of society. That act of rebellion resulted in man’s expulsion from the Garden, into the desert of a world deformed and darkened by sin. Saint Augustine, commenting on the spiritual sense or meaning of the man’s blindness, simply stated, “This blind man is the human race.” Although the man’s physical blindness was not due to his sin, all of mankind is stricken with spiritual blindness, passed on to us by our father Adam due to his prideful desire to find fulfillment apart from God. But it also points out that the disciples, like the Pharisees, are more interested in assigning blame than in extending mercy and healing. Jesus’ response might seem flippant-indeed, would be flippant-if He weren’t God. Part of the initial discussion is focused on the disciples’ question about who is to blame for the man’s blindness. The Pharisees, who present themselves as knowing everything of importance, expose themselves as men who can be taught nothing, even though they speak directly to Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word (cf. The intertwining themes of life and light, death and darkness, set the stage for many of the narratives and discourses in the Fourth Gospel, including today’s Gospel reading, which is the story of the man born blind.Īt the heart of this fascinating narrative is a simple but powerful contrast: the man who is blind from birth knows little, but upon encountering the healing Savior learns much. “What came to be through him was life,” the Apostle John wrote, “and this life was the light of the human race the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1:3b-5). The opening of the Gospel of John intentionally echoes the opening chapter of Genesis in describing how the Word of God-Who created all things-came into the world in order to bring about a new creation. Light, of course, is essential for the existence of living things, who rely upon it for everything from heat to energy to sight. ![]() ![]() God then separated the light from the darkness” (Gen 1:3). The first mention of this division is in the opening chapter of Genesis, in which God speaks light into being. Scripture refers many times to the contrast between darkness and light.
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