I was blind and now I can see

Today's Sunday Mass 1st reading is from 1st Book of Samuel 16:1, 6-7, 10-13; 2nd reading is from Ephesians 5:8-14 and the Gospel Reading is from John 9:1-41. It is not always the case, as much as the Catholic Church would like it to be, that the three Sunday Mass readings are such that they are co-related or synchronised, so that they all help to expound the gospel message for the day. Today is one of those special days, for it would be less easy to understand today's Gospel Reading without the introduction or guidance from the 1st and 2nd readings. When we say we need spiritual knowledge or wisdom instead of worldly knowledge or wisdom to understand the parables of Jesus or indeed the 'language' of Jesus, we are also saying that we need spiritual sight rather than worldly sight. And this is so apparent when you hear God's own words in the 1st reading from 1 Samuel 16:7 - "God does not see as man sees; man looks at (worldly) appearances but The Lord looks (spiritually) at the heart." In the 2nd reading St. Paul said at Ephesians 5:8 - 'You were darkness (i.e. blind) once but now you are (i.e. not blind anymore as you can now see the) light in The Lord; be like children of (sight who can see the) light,' and later at 5:14 - 'Wake up from your sleep (i.e. your 'lost sheep'), rise from the dead (mortality) and Christ will shine on you (eternally).' When you see with spiritual insight you will realise that 'blindness' is synonymous with 'darkness' and that 'sight' is synonymous with 'light'; and of course 'darkness' is associated with being 'lost', as in the 'lost sheep', and with 'mortality' and 'light' is associated with the opposite, i.e. 'found' and 'eternity'. The Gospel Reading begins with the disciples asking Jesus (at John 9:2) of the blind man they sighted who was blind from birth - 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, for him to have been born blind?' Jesus answered at John 9:3 - "Neither he nor his parents sinned, he was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him." If you read this passage literally in a worldly sense, you might end up thinking that God has a sadistic nature! This is totally untrue of course! This was not what Jesus meant in spiritual terms. You see, it is all about 'goats' and 'sheep'; and that is not a matter of judgement at all; even though the separation between 'goats' and 'sheep' are said to take place on Judgment Day (see Matthew 25:32-33). You see, whether we are 'goats' or 'sheep' come Judgment Day, has nothing to do with God at all. It has to do with our own free-will and volition, whether we want to take the journey home of the Lost Prodigal Son, whether we want to get off Jacob's Ladder! God is not interested in our worldly sins! That is why God does not judge! If God were to judge, he would end up punishing his 'lost sheep', his Lost Prodigal Son. No! God, the Spirit Father takes his Lost Prodigal Son back regardless of the fact that he is a sinner. In Luke 5:32 Jesus said - "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." We are all 'sinners' as worldly sons of man( as 'goats')! The 'forgiveness' by the Spirit Father and the 'redemption' by the spirit Lost Prodigal Son (the 'lost sheep') of the Original Sin of 'separation' (from God) are predicated on the repentant spirit Lost Prodigal Son's faith in/of the grace in his Spirit Father's unconditional love to accept him back home however much or whatever he had sinned in his alter ego as a worldly being (a 'goat'). God therefore does not and cannot judge what happens on and by the 'angels of God ascending and descending' Jacob's Ladder (Genesis 28:12). That has to do with The Immutable Law of Cause and Effect or You Reap What You Sow. It is in this sense of non-judgment that the Jews had no understanding of 'sin' when they called Jesus a 'sinner' for 'not keeping the sabbath' (John 9:16). It is their not knowing that what is important is the 'spirit' (the 'spiritual') over 'substance' (the worldly) that was their 'blindness'! For,

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when the 'blind' man who could now 'see', attested to them that - 'I was blind and now I can see' (John 9:25), all the Jews could worldly see was 'sin'! When the 'blind' man who could now 'see', saw Jesus for the first time, it was a different outcome. He saw Jesus and he did really spiritually see to 'believe', because he saw the 'Light'(of Jesus). Where he was once in the past, in 'darkness', he was now in the 'light'; which therefore takes us to St. Paul's message in the 2nd reading from Ephesians 5:8-14. And this is how we get to fully understand Jesus words at the end of today's Gospel Reading in John 9:39 - "For (spiritual) judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not (spiritually) see may see, and those who (worldly) see may be made blind." and at John 9:41 - "If you were (worldly) blind, you would have no sin (refer back to comments on John 9:2-3); but now you say, 'We (worldly) see.', therefore your sin remains.". Love and God Bless! Chuan 30/3/14

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