By Father Casey

One day as Jesus was walking along with his disciples, they noticed a blind man by the side of the road. The disciples assumed the man had done something wrong to deserve his blindness, or perhaps it was his parents' fault. Jesus replied with a lesson for us all: stop with the blame game. Stop with all the simplistic and self-righteous explanations for suffering. Some hard things are the way they are not because someone sinned, or because God is angry, but for deeper reasons that defy our easy understanding.

I know how badly we want things to make sense. We want bad things to happen to bad people (i.e. other people), and good things to happen to good people (i.e. us). When we get a challenging diagnosis, we wonder what we did to "deserve" it. When a tragedy happens, we wonder "why me"? When something awful happens to someone else, isn't there a ripple of a thought that says, "I wonder what they did?" But there is not always an easy answer for why things are the way they are. There is not always someone to blame, and our impulse to easily understand can prevent us from the hard and holy work of moving forward.

In the story, even after Jesus makes it clear that the blind man is not to blame for his condition, the path toward sight is not straightforward or clean. There is a miracle, but it is messy. Jesus spits on the ground, makes mud with his fingers, and smears the mud on the blind man's eyes. Only when the mud is washed away do his eyes finally work.

I have to admit, I prefer some of his other miracles. I like it when he needs only to say a word and someone's sight is restored, or when people need only to touch the hem of his garment to feel his healing power. Maybe it's the post-Covid mentality, but all the saliva in this story gives me the heebie jeebies. Which is precisely why it's so important.

Life does not always make sense, and neither does grace. In the same way we can't always understand why things are the way they are, neither can we always understand what Jesus is up to. Sometimes he shows up just as we hoped, and his help and healing are painless. But sometimes he shows up when we're still trying to figure out how we got into trouble in the first place, and the next thing we know we have muddy fingers in our eyes.

Which is why we need to remember this story, and the way grace isn't always comfortable. We do ourselves no service when we assume that just because Jesus is on our side, things will never be messy. Sometimes Jesus is most palpably present to us in the midst of the mess. Sometimes it takes more than a flick of his wrist or a wave of his hands to save us – not because he is limited, but because we are. Sometimes we can't see what he's up to until after the mud has been washed away, and the light shines in, and we realize just how amazing grace can be.

Fr. Casey +