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Lord, I do Believe

  • Writer: Fr. JC Rapadas, SVD
    Fr. JC Rapadas, SVD
  • Mar 21, 2020
  • 3 min read

Apparently, saliva is one of the most disgusting and abhorred emissions from the human body today because it is one of the potent conductors of Corona Virus from a contaminated person. But today Jesus uses it for healing and restoration.


Today, when we spit, or cough or sneeze, we would be isolated by people and presume we are contaminated. But Jesus uses the saliva and the earth soil to smear it on the eyes of the man born blind in order to restore him to the society.


St. Augustine gives a very nice commentary in today’s Gospel. He sees the element of the Incarnation in the mixing of the saliva of Jesus and of the earth soil. The divine mixing with the earthly thus creating the balm of healing and restoration. The incarnated Word of God is now the healer of the Human race


We have to recognize our being Christians as a way of seeing things. Christianity is an optic of faith. Christ tells his apostles: “blessed are your eyes for they see what others cannot see. Many governors and kings wish to see but they did not see it, to hear but they did not hear it.”



In baptism, we were given the capacity to see the beauty of the mystery of God, to see the silver linings in each crisis and to see the light of Christ ever shining midst the darkness. Our second reading puts it beautifully: “Awake, O sleeper and arise from the dead and Christ will give you light.”


While Corona Virus continues to infect many and cause the death of thousands, it also facilitated the long-overdue rest of the planet, lessening of the carbon and sulfur emissions. It also facilitated the long awaited rest of people who are working hard, the unification of families around normal family set ups, and a chance to bond with our confreres.


This being said, the healing of the man born blind reflects the invitation to restore and nourish our capacity to see beyond what our eyes could see, to ask the Lord to heal the blindness brought by sin which has hindered us to make the similar claim of the man born blind: I do believe Lord.


Faith always leads to hope. The color pink is a color of hope, the excitement for the coming better days. Since birth, the man born blind has been hoping to see, and may be at some point have gave up hoping. He was helpless as we all are right now. Remember the other instance at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-5). when Jesus also healed a helpless man and asked him to wash himself on the pool, similar to our situation in today’s Gospel.

The commonality between these healing on the Pool of Siloam and and the Pool at Bethesda is that Jesus helped 2 helpless men, sick men, men who had no one to lead them or guide them, men who were hoping, and after a long time of hopelessness, they were healed and restored by Jesus on account not of their arguments or parental sinfulness but on the sheer mercy, sheer compassion, sheer kindness.


This therefore leads to the ultimate of all values which is love. Having seen, and having believed, it is time to love and show it in the most concrete of ways. If Christianity is therefore a way of seeing, the values of our being Christians are faith, hope and love.





 
 
 

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