Loving A Hidden God
THE DARKNESS OF THE BLIND
What a great gift is given to a blind person when the doctor comes and cures his
blindness! To finally see the light! A person cured of blindness can find no adequate gift
to return to his healer. What is equal to the gift of sight restored? The cured blind
person may give the healer gold piled upon gold; but the healer gave light! If you ever
wished to remind the newly seeing person that in giving gold he truly gave nothing, just
put them in a room without light and tell them to look for the colors of all that
gold!"
Commentary on Psalm 26/2, 8.
As we travel down this river of time that channels the course of our lives, there will be good days and bad days, days of brilliant clarity and days of dark confusion. Sometimes we seem to know where we are going; at other times we float blindly into our future. We are understandably distressed. We would like to see for certain where we are going. We would like to see and understand the people we travel with. We would like to discern the type of person that we are. But we cannot. As we are carried along by the swift current of life we are somewhat blind.
Augustine believed that the power of sight was the most precious sense power that we humans possess. It was a constant joy for him to savor the sight of the beautiful land and sky and sea that surrounded him in the lush land of North Africa. It was truly a splendid thing to know that he had friends, but it was even better to be able to see them, to have them present and behold the affection shining from their eyes. In the midst of his various physical problems, he praised God for allowing him to continue to see. As he says in the passage quoted above, there are no earthly riches that can compare with the gift of sight. Better by far to be poor and seeing than to be rich and blind.
Perhaps blindness is less a burden for those who are born blind. Never experiencing sight, they do not know what they are missing. Born blind, they respond like every other infant, adjusting to the life that has been given to them. Only later, when they begin to compare themselves to others and hear others tell them what they are missing, will they perhaps weep for their loss and feel cheated.
The adjustment is more difficult for those who have experienced sight and then become blind. Once you have experienced the light of the sun, the harder it is to live in the darkness of a moonless night. And this is also true about the blindness of the spirit that at times affects us as we move through life. Through this spiritual blindness we seem to be shut off, at least for a time, from that divine light within that tells us how to deal with the times that has been given to us. (Commentary on Psalm 6, 8) The effect of suddenly plunging from enlightened ecstasy to dark depression is truly dreadful. As Augustine says:
Anyone who has experienced spiritual joy and gladness will also know how terrible it is to be suddenly deprived of the light of certain truth. If humans regard the loss of bodily sight which robs the eyes of daylight as a tragic misfortune, how terrible is the burden of one who is so overcome by sin as to completely lose sight of God. How awful is the condition of such a person condemned to endlessly walk along filthy paths.
Commentary on Psalm 9, 23
It is truly a frightening condition to "not know where you are going" after being so sure that all in life will be just fine. This fall from the light may be caused by our own perversity, but often it results from just being alive. Our life has taken a sudden turn and we are not prepared for it.
Certainly none of us are prepared for the trauma of existence. To move from "nothing" to "something" is indeed a radical change. Perhaps that is why we all seem to be born with clouded vision. It is as though we begin our existence with cataracts of the spirit, living a grey life in a universe of brilliant color, depending on the words of others to tell us what the world is like, depending on the words of others to give us hope. Thus, in our first years we were told to "eat our dinner" so that we could grow big and strong but we really did not know for sure how that could happen and how it would feel to be big and strong. As young teens we were told to go to school and study hard so that we could gain an important place in the world. But in our teens it was sometimes hard to believe that anyone would ever think we were important, that there indeed was an significant place for us in the unknown world that lay ahead.
This need to plunge into the unknown future continued through life. When we were young we were assured that someday we would find a true love but before it happened it was hard to know what the experience of love would be like, or to believe that someday it would come to us. In the prime of our life we were told that we could indeed have a grand old age if we prepared for it, if we took care of ourselves, if we invested wisely, if we bought the right insurance. But there was no insurance that our "golden years" would indeed be golden. We could not know before the fact whether we would grow old gracefully or indeed whether we would even reach old age. When we get sick, when we are dying, inevitably there will be kind souls who will assure us that some day we will be well and will live fine lives without any threat of death. We truly want to believe it, but before it happens it is so hard to see what vibrant health and life beyond death really is and to believe that it will really happen to us.
Like Bartimaeus, the blind man in the Gospel story (Mk 10:46-52), we too are blind and cannot see what lies ahead. We know that our life is moving but where it is going we simply do not know. People have told us of the good things that await us and we have fervently wanted to believe them, but in our dark days of blindness, it seems improbable (if not impossible) that we will ever see again.
The saving factor in the life of the blind Bartimaeus was that he never gave up hope. After a life lived in darkness, being pushed here and there by those who could supposedly see, being supported by the pity of others, he never gave up hope that one day he would be able to see the world as it is. Bartimaeus had to spend many years in darkness before he finally could see. So too, as we go through the periods of darkness in our lives, all we can do is to put up with our blindness and wait for the light to come. Our consolation must be in believing that, although Christ may not come quickly with a cure, this is no sign that he is distant. The story of Bartimaeus teaches that Jesus is with the blind even when he does not make all things clear.
And there are some positive elements in such dark periods in life. When you are blind, it is hard to find your own way. You are not tempted to go out on a limb, experimenting with new ventures, seeking new experiences, indulging in new perversities. When you are blind as to the direction of your life, all you can do is sit back and accept its flow, the flow that is being ever guided by the providence of a God who loves both those who can see him clearly and those who are still blind to his presence.
As we wait for the light, it is best to heed Augustine's advice to try to reach out to others who are going through their own periods of darkness. Company may not take away our misery, but it may direct our attention away from it for a while. And more, in trying to serve others who like ourselves cannot see, we are in fact serving the Lord that we cannot see. We give him the gift of our blindness and ask him to make good use of it. In the words of Augustine:
What then shall we give to that divine doctor who heals our earthy eyes so that we can see the colors of eternity? What can we ever give such a God? Well, God tells us what we must do. God says: "Take and drink from that same sometimes bitter draught of life that I sipped for your sake." [Matt 20.22]. Jesus says: "Do you love me? Then feed my sheep, those little ones for whose sake I have sipped the sadness of this life's cup!" (Jn 21.17]
Commentary on Psalm 26/2, 8.
The Gospel story ends happily. Jesus answered the prayer of the blind Bartimaeus. Jesus opened his eyes and for the first time the man born blind could see, and the first thing he saw was the face of Jesus Christ. Now he could see the world for what it was: a place where Jesus Christ lived. The man happily put aside the memories of his time of blindness and now seeing, began to follow Jesus down the road that led to the land beyond time, the eternal city where the sun always shines and everyone can see just fine.
Blind or seeing, that is where this river of our lives is leading us, though honestly it is sometimes hard to realize that this is true.