Faith gives us the real 20-20 vision

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

“HE touched their eyes, saying, ‘According to your faith, be it done unto you.’ And their eyes were opened.” (Mt 9,29-30) That’s what Christ told the blind men who begged him to cure them of their blindness.

We need to realize that it is faith, more than anything else, that would cure our real blindness which is not simply a physical thing but more of the spiritual and supernatural kind. Let’s remember that the reality that governs us is not simply the material and the natural, where we may have a perfect vision, but also and mainly the spiritual and the supernatural.

In this regard, we have to imitate the example of the two blind men who begged Christ for a cure of their blindness. Obviously, we have to first of all acknowledge our own blindness with respect to the spiritual and supernatural realities that govern our life. We cannot deny that with our proneness to fall into all forms of carnality and worldliness, we become blind to the spiritual and supernatural realities.

Our main problem is that we often fail to acknowledge this fact of life, especially when we happen to be gifted with high intelligence and other talents. With such condition, we fail to realize that our intelligence and will, our talents and the other gifts God has endowed us, are actually meant to enable us to enter into the spiritual and supernatural world, and ultimately to God. We are actually poised for that purpose.

When we use our faculties to engage only with the natural things, which we often do, we would actually be misusing them. That’s when we become very vulnerable to all kinds of anomalies and irregularities. We would have no ample defenses against the usual weaknesses and temptations we have in this world.

In fact, we can say that we are more blind the more gifted we are, because this latter status usually sheds some light that blinds us from the spiritual and supernatural realities rather than clarifies things for us. It tends to take us away from God rather than lead us to him.

We have to be most careful when perhaps because of our education, our experience, our position, among other things, we feel that we would already have enough reason to make ourselves our own standard of what is true, good and beautiful.

It’s always good to acknowledge our blindness so we can see things clearly through God’s grace. That’s simply because it’s when we acknowledge our blindness, deficiency and inadequacy to tackle our temporal affairs that we attract God’s grace, his light, his wisdom, his strength.

That is why we should always feel the need to pray, to do many other spiritual exercises, like having spiritual direction and confession, availing of the sacraments, undertaking continuing spiritual formation and ascetical struggle, to keep our natural faculties properly animated by faith and God’s grace, enabling them to enter into the spiritual and supernatural world.

If our worldly knowledge does not make our faith in God grow stronger, it would be a dangerous kind of knowledge. We have to correct and purify it immediately, giving it the right motive and purpose which is none other than to give glory to God. Otherwise, it would be a knowledge that would simply be at the service of our self-indulgence.

And when that knowledge cannot cope anymore with the challenges of our life, that’s when we would enter into all kinds of anomalies and irregularities leading us to issues of mental health, depression, and all kinds of justifications to rationalize acts and positions that usually are considered by our common sense as perversions.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com