Blindness is one of the physical defects that can cripple a man and make him almost useless and insignificant in a world where normal people live. The gift of seeing is one of the best gifts that God has bestowed on man. We cannot imagine a world where there is nothing but darkness all over. We all are dreaming to see all the beautiful sights that this world can offer us to see. And so, to be blind is almost synonymous to dying because blindness and darkness are the alter ego of death.

            The man in our gospel today is dead from his birth. He never saw the world since birth and to the world standards, he is dead. His humanity is filled with the darkness of despair, loneliness, misery and maybe with so much pain and agony. But his spirit does not follow the same path for he is destined to meet the Lord who would eventually give him what he lacks and perfect his defects. Jesus did not instantaneously give him his eyesight but he did it with a condition of washing the mud from his eyes first that Jesus smeared on him. Other gospel miracles tell us of instant cures and instant solutions to problems but this one requires something from the blind man. God is not being unjust here but maybe he simply wants to raise a point that out of every grace that is freely given to man, there is a corresponding obligation or duty on the part of man. I think this is fair enough because we are not supposed to be spoon fed by God without us doing our part.

            After his sight was given to him, he bowed down and worshipped Jesus, his Lord. Bowing down would mean his submission of his entire life to God and he placed the Lord at the center of his life in worship. Now the blind man has been transformed from a dead and useless creature to a living and efficient tool of propagating God’s love and mercy to the world. In the darkness of his life, the light of Christ had shone. In his death, the new life in Christ has dawned. And in his despair, hope was his salvation.

            My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the whole country is in darkness and the whole country is dead. We can also say that the whole country is beginning to despair and that the Philippines is physically blind. I don’t need to elaborate on these things because I know that you know so well that these are the harsh realities that confront each and everyone of us. We clamor for a change not only in our government and leaders but change in the entire system of our life as Filipinos. We start to blame one another save ourselves because we no longer want to remain blind and embrace the darkness in our life. We are in darkness because we are blind to the truth. We are hopeless because we do not want the Lord to rule our lives and in the process let go of our personal dreams and ambitions. We are dead because the light of Christ has been vanished by our selfishness.

            So where do we go? The blind man in the gospel is so lucky that Christ had passed by where he was probably sitting. However, we are not so lucky just like him because the truth is we are even luckier than him because Christ is wanting day and night to be with us. The problem lies in our stubbornness and our refusal to simply let him in to our lives. We do not want our country to be ruled by God and this is evidenced by the fact that we continue to cloud the truth to come out in the open. We can never be like the blind man who turned out to be personification of God’s love and mercy and we can never have the new life because what we want actually is to remain forever in the darkness of our lives and in our sinfulness.

            This country is sick. Change in the leadership may not be the solution and the people power also may not be the necessary means to effect change. What we actually need is the change of heart of every man. I bet this is next to impossible and so, personally, my fervent prayer is for every corrupt government officials, the executors of political killings and extra-judicial killings, the liars in the senate hearings, the rapists and drug addicts, the robbers and killers, the pimps and the harlots to simply settle in this forsaken country of ours. When everyone of them from the whole wide world is gathered in this little archipelago, maybe that’s the time for me to settle somewhere else where peace and tranquility, justice and equality, goodness and God’s love reign as never before. That’s the only time when we can say we are no longer blind.