Thought for the week - 15 March 2026

There used to be a blog called ‘Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things’, I was a great fan. It showed the leader of North Korea being taken to see things, and he would look at them with a degree of interest, depending on the Thing he was presented with. Sometimes, one of his (rather obvious) body doubles would take his place, and their look of sheer incomprehension of what they were being shown could be telling, a little like when a mechanic shows me what is wrong with my car, I simply don’t know what these parts do, I do not wish to know, all I require is that they work and that is his job, not mine. I do not catch my own fish because there are fishermen, I do not start my own wars because there are people who enjoy that sort of thing as well. There are ways and ways of seeing, and ways and ways of looking. In today’s Gospel, a man born blind is given sight in a doubly extraordinary way. He is given by Jesus ordinary sight, except that this gift came to him in an extraordinary way. It was by way of a miracle. Receiving sight was also for the man a sign of something else, in fact, a sign about someone else. The man who had been blind is given by way of faith to see who cured him, in all his depth. Once he has the eyes of faith he believes in Jesus and worships him. As a man born blind, not as one who went blind, I suspect that he looked at things with a degree of intensity and incomprehension even great than that of Kim Jong-Il’s body doubles. And interestingly, we should focus on one element of the story – surrounded by that which is new and incomprehensible to him, He looks at the one who cured him and sees who he is, before he even so much as looks at himself.

As the season of Lent unfolds, we are sharply aware of the clouds that gather around Jesus, how the darkness of his suffering and death increases. This man who brought light to the bling man is himself being enveloped in darkness. The increasing darkness is ominous of very dark deeds to come. ‘As soon as Judas had taken the piece of bread he went out. It was night’. In the Gospel we have just heard, Jesus says that the night will soon be here, yet while he is in the world he is the light of the world. Later in the same Gospel, Jesus will say that he has come into the world as light, to prevent anyone who believes in him from staying in the dark anymore. Nobody who walks in the dark knows where he is going. The effects of the light, we are told by today’s second reading, are seen in complete goodness, right living and truth, a truth recognised by the blind man in the Gospel.

‘What has come into being in him was life

life that was the light of men;

and light shines in darkness,

and darkness could not overpower it’.

The One who is light is also truth. We cannot deny that there is a darkness even after Christ’s resurrection. It is a residual and lingering darkness which can dim the light for us though not extinguish it. Till Christ’s total radiance is definitively revealed, we live in a time when drifting clouds can obscure the sun. The sun is there unfailingly every day, but at times we go forward with less than clarity and with stumbling steps. More and more now, we are even misled by those who claim to know the light – the Gospel of Wealth, of Success, or becoming better people through Gnosticism rather than scripture alone, of Christian Nationalism. All these things are blinding humanity to the simple truth revealed in Christ. He is the light of the world, and there can be no other. The blind man knew this, we also should learn it.

Not everyone rejoiced at what had happened to the blind man. Once healed, he was not believed by everyone and was driven away. For some, the man who had come from the margin of disability and poverty was still to be kept at bay, like Samaritans or other challenging people. When Jesus heard that they had driven away the formerly blind man, he went and found him. There was more light to be given to the man, the light of faith of which the giving of natural sight was a sign. The One who is light is also love.

We often speak about coming to understand something we had not understood before as a ‘coming to see’: ‘now I see’ can mean now I understand. The cured man was brought by love to see not just the natural world, but also to see and share in the world being transformed in Jesus Christ. That transformation is offered to us this Lent and all the days of our lives, in Holy Mother Church, in the love we are called to by Him who alone can bring light to the whole world. And He does not just illuminate the mind and heart and eyes of this man born blind, He offers light and truth to every person in the world, though the church, through scripture and through the love we have for Him and each other. We do not seek the light, the light seeks us, and what He seeks, He will find. He has found you, He has found us, Laetare, Rejoice!