Curing our blindness

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THAT gospel episode about Christ curing a man born blind (cfr. Jn 9,1-41) reminds us that given the truth of our faith that we are supposed to live a spiritual and supernatural life with God, we are prone to have some kind of natural, if not infranatural blindness because we fail to enter into the spiritual and supernatural world, and prefer to remain in the natural level of our life.

Because of that, we miss to see many things that are actually proper for us to know and to live by. Our infranatural blindness is worse than our natural blindness because we can even fail to see the natural things of our life. That’s when we are in the state of sin that obviously would have a big effect on how we see and understand even the natural things.

Remember that in the beginning, in the life of our first parents before they fell into sin, they were in the state of original justice. They could see God and the things of God directly.

But since they fell into sin, they lost that state of original justice. And we, being their descendants, would now be born without that state of original justice. In this sense, we can also be said to be born blind. That’s what original sin is all about.

And to cure this blindness, the only way is to go to Christ who clearly said, “I am the light of the world…whoever follows me will have the life of life.” (Jn 8,12) Obviously, the upshot of this consideration is for us to know and love Christ to such an extent that we become like him as we should. In other words, we become “alter Christus” (another Christ).

As “alter Christus,” we should go to the extent when we can echo St. Paul’s words: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So, I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal 2,20)

With Christ we would have discernment, able to see the things of the heart of men rather than relying simply on appearance or some worldly trends. With Christ, we would be able to make proper judgments, rather than being judgmental.

We therefore should do everything to become more and more like Christ. We need to know him more by studying his life, meditating on the gospel, and following his example. We should try to make ourselves one with him especially through the sacraments, and most especially through the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.

Yes, we have all the means for us to truly become “alter Christus.” We have the sources of divine revelation that show us the truth about ourselves. We have the word of God. We have the Church and the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist.

We just have to make the necessary adjustments in the way we think, in the way we identify ourselves. It would not be presumptuous, even given our limitations and woundedness, to start thinking that “I am another Christ, ‘alter Christus.’” We just have to try our best, with God’s grace to think and act like Christ.

With Christ we would have the proper understanding of things. We would have a universal outlook, and we can take on anything that can happen to us, whether good or bad, because Christ himself has assumed everything human including to be like sin even if he himself has not committed any sin. “He (God) made him (Christ) to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Cor 5,21)

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com