By DONALD DeMARCO
Jewish society in the time of Jesus was organized according to a veritable caste-system. An invisible, but highly effective wall, separated those who knew the Law — the Priests, Scribes, and Pharisees — and the “crowd.” A member of the lower class might know more about the Law than one of the higher class, but he was nonetheless condemned to remain part of his lower class, subject to the social disdain and prejudice that was heaped upon him and his peers.
This caste-system is important to know if we are to grasp fully the story that begins with the man, blind from birth, whom Jesus — who came into the world to bring light — cured. Jesus was a member of the lower social order and therefore looked upon with deep suspicion by the Pharisees. His miraculous cure of the blind man very much impressed onlookers. Jesus was asked, “Rabbi, who has sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” It was a common assumption at the time that an innocent person could not be the victim of a great evil.
Jesus responded by saying. “Neither this man sinned nor his parents, but the works of God were to be made manifest in him. I must do the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world I am the light of the world” (John 9:1-39).
The miracle was so extraordinary that it was incredible. People wondered if the man who could now see was the same person who was blind from birth. But the beneficiary of God’s mercy insisted that he was, indeed, the same man. Some of the Pharisees tried to put down the incident, claiming that Jesus “is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” They were divided, however, and sent for the man’s parents to verify his identity. The parents, however, were fearful of indicating how the cure came about. They knew that any association with Christ resulted in banishment from the synagogue. Consequently, the Pharisees sent for the man and interrogated him once again. They could not accept how he was cured, branded him as “born insins” and “turned him out.”
When Christ heard of the hard-heartedness of the Pharisees, He said, “For judgment have I come into this world, that they who do not see may see, and they who see may become blind.”
The sin, however, belonged not to the man blind from birth but to the Pharisees for not being able to see the truth of things.
Romano Guardini comments on this Johannine passage, stating that those “who consider themselves already great, who are loathe to relinquish their earthly knowledge, are adolescent fools and will remain so . . . Jesus knows that He has come that they who do not see may see, and they who see may become blind.”
The lessons of the Gospel are for all times. We are all travelers on the road to Heaven. There is far more to reality than what we see here and now. The noted author and editor Joseph Pearce has remarked that if one is not “homo viator,” he is “homo superbus, the proud-man, a pathetic creature trapped within the confines of his own self-constructed ‘self,’ a prisoner of his own pride and prejudice.”
There is a great deal of talk these days about rooting out prejudice. But there is far too little talk about the root of that vice. It is naive to the highest degree to believe that prejudice can be overcome by political action. Prejudice begins in the heart when pride displaces humility. It is evident in the story of the blind man whose sight was restored, that the root of the Pharisees’ prejudice against him and his fellow commoners (the “crowd”) is pride. And pride leads to blindness, the inability to see what is obvious. The Pharisees lost their ability to respect those whom they deemed beneath them because of their elitist arrogance.
The abortion issue exemplifies a confrontation between those who can see and those who refuse to see. It is only too obvious that abortion takes the life of an innocent human being, damages the aborting woman both physically and psychologically, harms marriage and the family, compromises medicine, law, and education, endorses sweeping censorship, and in a mood of desperation, resorts to violence.
Those who identify themselves as “pro-choice” are a diverse group and are not formally identified by any particular name, such as Pharisee. They are to be found in education, politics, and in the media. They flatter themselves by calling themselves “liberal” while demeaning their opponents as “conservatives” or worse. But they do not see what is transpiring. They are, to quote the late Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, the “arrogant elite” who happen to be in a position to use their power while shunning any sense of openness to the truth of things.
The root of prejudice is pride. We may identify pride in Chestertonian terms as “the falsification of fact by the introduction of self.” The ego has a way of intruding and pushing reality aside. And it does this without notifying its possessor of what it is doing. Pride, therefore, is the most difficult vice to diagnose. It is also the least realistic since it puts the self above reality.
One antidote against pride, however, is to read the Gospel, especially the story of the man who was born blind and, through the mercy of God, was cured. Then one will understand that it takes a miracle to banish pride so that one can see, but miracles do take place on a daily basis through the healing power of grace.
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