First TIme Ever I Saw Your Face

For two summers in my early 20s, I worked as a counselor and aide at a Catholic-run group home for men with mental and physical disabilities, many of them quite severe.  As these men got older, family visits were few and far between, mostly because their parents had died and siblings rarely came around. 

There was one younger resident of the group home, however, whose mom came every week on Friday after work, taking the bus from Chester to Springfield. She was in her late 60s at that point, but looked twenty years older.  Like clockwork, she arrived at dinner time for the residents and sat with her son, feeding him whatever soft-food concoction the kitchen staff made that evening. “Momma’s here,” she’d announce as she hugged the 40-year-old man confined to a wheelchair. By this point, Andy was non-verbal, nearly blind and in near-constant pain. Swallowing was difficult for him; personal care a challenge.

I would sit with Andy’s mom on occasion as she fed him, talking to him as she gently asked him to open his mouth for peas or mashed potatoes, his favorite. “Raising him wasn’t easy,” she said. “Everyone told me I was wrong for bringing Andy into the world. My sister-in-law even said to me more than once: ‘You got what you deserved.'”

I asked her what was meant by that. Looking at me intently, Andy’s mom said, “Let’s just say I didn’t live a virtuous life in my younger years. Multiple men. Lots of drugs. Andy was seen as my punishment from God.”

Can you imagine saying that to anyone?

John’s Gospel story this fourth week of Lent is another long and complex one, similar to that of the Samaritan woman at the well from last week. Themes of disability and sin, darkness and light, religious righteousness and excommunication are brought forth as the central question is asked: what does it mean to truly see?

What strikes me in a powerful way throughout this passage is the fact that all who were physically sighted (minus Jesus and the healed man) were actually quite blind in a number of ways:

The neighbors, upon seeing the man no longer blind and begging, asked each other if this was the same boy they knew all their lives. Most weren’t sure, quite frankly. How could it be that they spent years in the company of this man and never really saw him? Because he was considered “less than” or someone to be avoided, no one took the time to really see him and offer him dignity and respect.  (How are we in such moments?)

The man’s parents, too, couldn’t even enjoy the miracle of their son’s healing because they were too afraid that their answer to the synagogue officials about Jesus’ healing power would result in their own excommunication. It might be fair to say here that they valued their own standing and reputation over that of living the truth.  (How are we in such moments?)

And as for the Pharisees: they’re so easy to dislike, aren’t they? And yet, to be fair, they believed they were obediently following the Law of God, and doing so with precision and perfection would lead to righteousness. No unnecessary work was to be done on the Sabbath – it was the Lord’s Day, and God made that clear. Thus, the healing could have waited until the next day. 

What the religious leaders failed to see, though, (pun intended)was the fact that the One who did the healing was actually the Lord of the Sabbath Himself – the very One who came in order that all of us may discover the ways in which we are called to cast-off the darkness of sin and live in the light of mercy and truth.

Time and again – and it has been a problem long after the Pharisees have come and gone – people (including religious leaders) have chosen to live in the darkness of their own hate and from their own misconceived notions of God. They expect a God who makes sinners pay – except when they themselves slip-up along the way. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

All three groups – the neighbors, parents and religious leaders – really are a wake-up call for us who follow Jesus and long to grow in relationship with Him and our faith. Although physically-sighted, they have become blind to the genuine Heart of God present and at work, loving and healing the very ones we think or believe shouldn’t or don’t deserve to be healed.

What Jesus is ultimately doing here is showing us the Face of the Father who loves us, especially in the places where sin has blinded us. The Lord always comes to the sinner (meaning all of us) in order to set us free of the chains that keep us tethered to darkness: the chains of self-righteousness and holier-than-thou attitudes; the chains of jealousy and envy; the chains of fear and of wanting others to pay for their mistakes.

“I got what I deserved. God is punishing me.”

The blind man in this Gospel … Andy’s Mom from modern-day Chester … have been told all their lives that their own sinfulness (or that of past generations) led to the suffering that they experienced, be it blindness or a disabled child.  God gave you what you deserved.

But look at how beautiful and merciful Jesus responds to the disciples who pose the very question: “Who sinned to make that beggar blind?” Jesus turns their understanding (and ours) completely upside down: Blindness is not a punishment from God. The Father does not send disability as a “reward” for sinful behavior. That is not the ways of a Loving Parent.  It is not God’s way.

While it is true that our sinful actions can (and often do) result in consequences that lead to physical, mental, emotional and spiritual harm for ourselves or others, God does not sit in His Heaven plotting ways to punish us for the wrongs we’ve done. Love, when it is authentic, course-corrects always from the space where mercy-and-justice combine to help and heal the one who has gone astray. Everything about God is about healing, never punishment for punishment’s sake. Jesus Christ willingly suffered and died at Calvary on our behalf so that Mercy has the last word, not revenge or anger or “justice” that aims to crush one’s spirit. That’s not God, because that’s not love.

Rather, our Father through Christ in the Spirit is One who loves us unconditionally and calls us back to the eternal forgiveness that He offers in Eucharist and Confession, and He reminds us that even the crosses we sometimes carry as a result of sin (our own or others’) can be used to reveal the true glory of God at work, saving us and calling us back to wholeness.

Isn’t it interesting that the sighted man who once was blind could see in his physical blindness what others could not see: that Jesus puts a relationship of healing and mercy as top priority, and that even the most wounded or challenging parts of our lives can be used by God to reveal His love and care for us. Meanwhile, those who should have seen that forgiveness and mercy are, in fact, the true living-out of the Sabbath in its fullness were blinded to the truth that God’s definition of justice for our sinful ways always involves a way back to Love and wholeness – a way back to Him – always.

I got the sense from my encounters with Andy’s Mom those two summers long ago that she came to understand this very thing. 

“My family considered Andy a punishment,” she told me that night at dinner. “But he is my greatest gift. God didn’t punish me with him, and Andy’s challenges allow me and others who know him to love selflessly and authentically. Andy shows us who God is, and my boy taught me that I am worthy – even with all my past faults – to love and be loved. I am blessed.”

And Jesus said: “I came so that those who do not see might see, and those who [think they] see might become blind …” in order to really see as God does.



All through the lens of Mercy poured out on the Cross …