“Why was this man born blind,” the disciples ask Jesus. And we can see why they ask. “Did this man sin,” they ask, “or was it his parents?” If it could be somebody’s sin, then people can reasonably hope that such suffering won’t come to them, or at least it won’t if they try hard enough not to sin.

But this is an appalling way to think about suffering, isn’t it? It is terrible to suppose that all suffering is punishment for sin. And what kind of God inflicts blindness on a newborn as a punishment for sin?

So Jesus dismisses such an attitude entirely. The man’s blindness has nothing to do with the sins of anyone, Jesus says. The blindness is about the future, not about the past. God let this man be born blind that the works of God might be manifest through him.

At first glance this explanation seems at least as bad as the thought of the disciples! But not if we understand what it means for the man himself that the works of God are manifest through him. At the beginning, he is a poor, marginalized nobody in his society, with nothing much to his credit. When the story ends he has become an icon of faith and courage, a witness to God’s goodness and an example to all of us. When the works of God are manifest through him, he himself becomes glorious. Who would not want to be like him?

The Lord was his shepherd, even though he was born blind. There was nothing he did want, as the Responsorial Psalm says.

Eleonore Stump