Scripture scholar Thomas Brodie writes of the man born blind: His first words, ”ego eimi” mean literally, “I am.” But there’s more to this than a simple self-identification. They also place him in line with God’s self-definition in the Hebrew scripture, “I am who am,” and Jesus’ string of identifiers elsewhere in John: I am the bread of life (6:35) and light of the world. This spunky, uneducated man represents us all, made in God’s image. (The Gospel According to John New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, 55.)
Furthermore, the formerly blind man models how to trust. He’s so grateful to Jesus he believes him completely, and bows in reverence to him. He may not have read anything, but he stands in sharp contrast to those who may be more educated, still desperately clinging to a tired tradition. Their blindness keeps them from seeing how awesomely God works in the present.
We shouldn’t pick on them when we all have our blind spots, and what follows may be mine. This Lent is pervaded by news of crushingly inhumane federal policies which benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. It’s the kind of gross injustice the Hebrew prophets railed against, and they didn’t even have our expectations of democracy, a system rooted in the consent of the governed.
When did we the governed agree to freeze funding for Jesuit Refugee Service’s life-saving work of—just one example–providing medicine, food, shelter and services for children with disabilities? Or agree to stiffing the Catholic bishops for $13 million worth of care provided before Jan. 24 to resettle refugees who are in the U.S. legally? When did we vote to treat Canada as enemy and Putin as ally? A major foreign policy shift, and we had no say?
To avoid closing with pessimism, two examples of clear seeing: first, a film streaming on Amazon, “Becoming Katherine Graham.” During previous crises, this woman who was totally unprepared to take on running The Washington Post made the brave decisions to publish the Pentagon Papers, revealing the disaster unfolding in Vietnam, and to uncover the Watergate fraud which eventually led to Nixon’s resignation. At stake was the first amendment, which will sound familiar to those following the controversy about the AP refusing to conform to “Gulf of America” and being punished with no access to the oval office. (Nixon used the same strategy.)
The second clear clarion: when Trump threatened Georgetown Law about eliminating all DEI, Dean Treanor responded and didn’t hold back: “Given the First Amendment’s protection of a university’s freedom to determine its own curriculum and how to deliver it, the constitutional violation behind this threat is clear, as is the attack on the University’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution.”
Blindness and insight take different forms, but have characterized humanity since biblical times.
The Genius of Jesus, The World of Women–Kathy Coffey
Day of Prayer, Sat. April 5
St. Thomas More Parish, Manhattan, KS
$55
8:30-3:30
900 Kimball Ave, Manhattan, KS 66502 | 785-776-5151 | stm@stmmanhattan.com
Kathy Coffey 
I don’t see the blind man’s faith as to how it relates to fighting against the injustices of the Trump administration. And the few who oppose are commendable. But my mind goes to what was happening to protesters in Argentina in the ’70’s and early 80’s, and how it seemed to take the persistence of angry mothers and their presence in a public square that somehow finally generated the energy to confront the evil in the country. We are being picked apart systematically, unrelenting deal making digging the hole still deeper. Our best hope is our former? allies holding onto world order until somehow we will be able to find a united front of confrontation, more than likely not until our economy sours so bad that it will be the lack of bread rather than the righteousness to make things right. Sorry but this whole thing is so slippery I seem to loose coherence.
John Novotny, 80 year old living in senior apartment, near to my wits end.
BTW I got lost in the “leave a comment” thing at the end of your message