The obstacle of interior darkness

Perhaps we will have to overcome another obstacle: darkness in our interior life. A pious person can have his or her poor heart in darkness; and this darkness can last a few moments, a few days, a longer period, even years. Then is the time to cry out: Be gracious to me, O Lord, for to you do I cry all the day. For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you (Ps 86[85]:3,5). And it is time to meditate on the extraordinary deed which St John relates for us: As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:1-3).

Living by faith

It could be that our blindness ‒ if it occurs ‒ is not a consequence of our errors but something God wants to use to make us holier and more effective. Whatever the case, it is a matter of living by faith and making our faith more theological, less dependent on reasons other than God himself. “A person with little learning is far more sure of something he hears from an expert than he is of any insight of his own. And so much more is someone more sure of what he hears from God, who is infallible, than of what he sees with his own fallible reason.”¹²

Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud, and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing (John 9:6-7). Purify yourself, and you will once again have clear, divine sight, much better than it was before.