Fr. Mike's Gospel Reflection for - Sunday, March 15, 2026

This weekend’s Gospel reminds us that many of us suffer from a lack of sight. In the passage, the man was “born blind,” the disciples were blind, the man’s neighbors were blind, and the Pharisees were blind.

When Jesus encounters the man “born blind,” he was both physically and spiritually blind. By the end of the passage, Jesus had cured both forms of blindness. Jesus doubles the meaning of the verb, “to see,” recalling both physical sight and inward illumination. The spiritual cure occurs when Jesus reveals Himself to the man: “You have seen him, the one speaking with you is he.”

The disciples are blind to the love of God. They immediately assume that the man’s blindness is the result of sin – either his sin or the sin of his parents. They believe that God punishes sinners with bad circumstances. Jesus does not follow their line of reasoning. Instead, he directs them to the work that God has sent Him to perform and to the glory that God receives from that work. Jesus makes it quite clear that God does not make an instrument out of suffering, making it somehow necessary.

The community was blind to the man. He was nobody to them. They only saw his condition, not him. After his cure, they couldn’t even recognize him as the same man. They questioned his cure because they, like the Pharisees, were blind to the possibilities that Jesus could achieve.

The Pharisees were blinded by their pride, doubt, and anger. They ignored the evidence; they doubted the identity of the man and that he was born blind; and, they denied God’s action in the healing. The truth upset them so much that they threw the formerly blind man out of the temple. When he encountered Jesus after his banishment from the temple, Jesus again “opens his eyes” by revealing His identity. The man who had been blind exclaims: “Lord, I believe!” and he worships Jesus.

As we contemplate this Gospel story, let’s ask Jesus to cure our spiritual blindness which prevents us from seeing others as God sees them. Let’s think about those times in our lives when we allow our pride to blind us, when we prefer our inner blindness to the truth, and when we close our eyes to the reality of God’s love.

Fr. Mike