Blindness | Ora, Et Cetera

How much should we trust, really?

Jesus said to them,
“If you were blind, you would have no sin; 
but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.”
John 9:41 NABRE

A few weeks ago, I was driving my boys to Bert Adams Scout Camp in Covington, GA. We were running late. I had rushed to finish a project at work and everything else fell behind.

One thing I had missed was praying Evening Prayer before getting on the road. The plan was to finish work, get everything packed, have a few minutes of relaxing prayer time at about 5 PM (“because it’s time”), and then hit the road. Alas, it didn’t happen.

But no worries, I queued up the Liturgy of the Hours podcast¹. During the space for intercessory prayer, I paused to offer up specific intentions. The first prayer I offer up is always for my wife, Emily, and myself. Usually the prayer sounds like this:

Lord, I pray for Emily and I in our vocation, that we may hear the voice of God and respond to it with our lives. Please give us just enough light to take one step along your path.

This time, however, I felt that I needed to change the prayer slightly. One reason is that I’ve been praying to trust in the Lord, totally and completely. I struggle with trust. I pray for it. I struggle with it.

The other reason I changed the prayer was because at that moment, Emily was preparing to lead music for a wedding at our church. So instead of praying for “just enough light”, I said:

Help us to be totally blind and listen only for your voice. Even if we make a mistake along the way, help us to know that you’ll always be at our side. Make us blind so we totally trust in you.

It was a simple prayer, offered in earnest.

An hour later we pulled into Scout camp and I wouldn’t have a chance to connect with Emily until we got home on Sunday.

Photo by Cherry Laithang on Unsplash

Clarity

Back in January, I texted a friend I hadn’t been in touch with a while. I wanted to both offer my prayers for him and to see how he was doing. When he asked how I was doing, I said I was “learning to trust more”. In response, he shared this vignette about Mother Teresa²:

Upon arriving, she said, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

And he said, “Yes, you can pray for me. You can pray that I have clarity.”

And she said, “No, I am not going to pray that you have clarity because clarity is the last thing that's holding you back!”

He said, “Mother Teresa what are you talking about? You have had clarity your whole life.”

She said, “No, I've never had clarity. I've only had trust.”

When my friend shared this with me, I was convicted. I’m a huge fan of clarity. Clarity was one of the original three watchwords at Fullstory and I counted myself among its champions. “Few problems can survive their thorough description",” we’d say. I’ve personally written about clarity numerous times in my work newsletter. I rely on clarity so much in my secular work that it truly breaks my brain to set clarity aside in my faith, or at least let it be subservient to faith and to trust.

How can I follow the Lord if I don’t have clarity?

“If you were blind”

Fast forward several weeks to the Fourth Sunday of Lent. The Gospel reading for that day³ was the story from John 9 where Jesus heals the man born blind. The entire story is worthy of a lifetime of exegesis, what with themes of generational sin, Jesus spitting on the ground to make clay, “doing work” (healing) on the sabbath, the initial timidity of the healed blind man, and then finally his full-throated witness to the powerful healing work of Jesus, only to get thrown out of the synagogue as a result of that witness.

It feels like the story should end at verse 39, where the blind man confesses, “I do believe, Lord,” and then worships Jesus. But the Gospel continues:

Then Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.”

Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?”Jesus said to them,“If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.

Strikingly, Jesus doesn’t say, “if you could see…”; he specifically says, “if you were blind….”. Is He asking us to be blind… on purpose?

And sin! Are you saying that I disobey God? Are you saying that I’m the source of pain and suffering in the lives of others? When faced with our own sin, we can’t help but cry out, like Jean Valjean, “Je suis un misérable!”⁴, or St. Paul, “O wretched man that I am!”

Faced with our own sin—if indeed we choose to face it—we feel lost, totally blind. If we say, “what sin?”, our blindness remains, as does our sin. Choosing blindness opens the door to the one who stands at the door and knocks.

Trust. And Peace.

What do we have, if not sight? Trust.

What do we have, if not clarity? Peace.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6-7 ESV

For most of my time in college, I was a Catholic seminarian studying to be a priest, but also discerning if I actually had a call to the priesthood. Especially during my last year, I deeply wrestled with the angst of not knowing my vocation. Was it priesthood? Marriage? Something else? And the Lord wouldn’t tell me.

I was faithful in prayer! I was open with my spiritual director! The angst remained. Darkness.

Several months before graduation, on a trip to Rome, I felt God said to me, “Marriage will be my mercy in your life.” And I felt an overwhelming peace.

Coming home

I was exhausted when the boys and I returned from the Scout camp on Sunday. Emily and I hadn’t had a chance to catch up since Friday. After listening to stories about falling out of bed in a sleeping bag and shooting BB guns, Emily was eager to tell me about the wedding on Friday night.

Ben, I can’t explain what happened. When I went to play the opening song, O God Beyond All Praising, I completely froze. I know that song! We sang it at our wedding! But I completely forgot how to play it in the moment. My brain wouldn’t remember.

Then it was time to start and I had to just move my hands to play and open my mouth to sing. I should have been anxious. But instead I had total peace. Yes there were mistakes, but everything was okay. I was okay.

It’s like I was blind.

1. It’s called “Pray Station Portable”, I can’t make this up.

2. Apparently this story is from Brennan Mannings’ book Ruthless Trust, which you can find quoted here and elsewhere.

3. Technical point: We’re in liturgical Year B, but our parish was doing the Scrutiny Year A Readings that day at all masses, in unity with the catechumens who would be entering the Church at Easter. I’m not a liturgist, but from what I understand, masses during Lent with catechumens use the Year A readings.

4. Jean Valjean, having just had his soul “bought” for God by the bishop, steals from a poor boy along a highway and is forced to confront his sin. His exclamation in the original French is almost certainly pointing to Romans 7:24.