By Fr. Johnny Go, SJ

School Director

Posted Monday 07-March-2005 9:56 AM

Homily delivered by Fr. Johnny C. Go, SJ at Mary the Queen Parish on 06 March 2007 during the 6 pm Sunday Mass.

If I had to summarize the gospel story in one sentence, I think it would be: “To see is not to believe.” Now that’s a pretty ironic thing to say considering that today’s gospel is about the miraculous healing of a man born blind. But let’s see what it means by paying attention to the different things happening in the story.

First of all, after the blind man had acquired his vision, the people who used to see him as a blind beggar, upon seeing him now, could not believe that it was the same man. The man himself had to insist that he was indeed the blind beggar they used to see! For the blind man’s neighbors, to see was not to believe.

Secondly, when he explained to the Pharisees how Jesus had given him his sight, even if they could see with their own eyes that the man could now really see, they refused to believe that Jesus was a prophet. When the man made that claim about Jesus, they got annoyed and threw him out. Certainly for the Pharisees, seeing was not enough for them to believe.

But it doesn’t end there. After being thrown out, the man himself met Jesus and saw him with his own eyes, the very person who had healed him of his blindness, and yet he did not recognize the Lord. When Jesus asked him “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” the formerly blind man told Jesus, “Who is he so that I may believe in him?” Even for the blind man whom Jesus had healed, to see was not to believe.

The gospel message goes against the saying that a lot of people subscribe to—the saying that “To see is to believe.” The gospel tells us that if we want to wait until we see before we decide to believe, we will never end up believing.

The reason for this is that not everything can be seen, and certainly not the important things. The short novel The Little Prince has an unforgettably beautiful line that expresses this same truth: “What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

There are many people today who insist on scientific proofs before they will believe in anything. They will not accept something unless they are able to gather sufficient data about it and even measure it. There’s a name for this type of thinking—“positivism”—which was really quite fashionable in the 19 th Century, when people believed that science and technology could solve and explain everything.

Today, however, all respected scientists are very much aware of the limitations of science. They know that what is legitimate in the realm of science—the scientific method—cannot be applied beyond it, on things spiritual and supernatural. What is surprising and disturbing is that many of us still unwittingly subscribe to the positivist worldview even when it comes to matters of faith. But even the great Albert Einstein himself did not believe in this. He had a sign hanging in his office at Princeton that said: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

In other words, to see is not to believe.

There are also people who don’t exactly demand scientific proofs before they believe something, but instead they insist on religious proofs—or what we call miracles. No less than the positivists, they believe that “to see is to believe.” I know a friend who lives a life that is free of moral constraints—which is really a nice way of saying he doesn’t care much about morality. Whenever we end up discussing his lifestyle and the need to mend his ways, he always insists that he will have no trouble converting to a moral life if he experiences a miracle. He claims that only if he witnesses a visible and persuasive proof of God’s existence will he allow himself to be converted.

The problem is, people who make demands for miracles before they believe or before they mend their ways will never change. Even if my friend witnesses a miracle performed before his very eyes, he would most probably not convert. It just doesn’t work that way, as our gospel story shows. The blind man’s neighbors and the Pharisees saw the effect of Jesus’ miracles for themselves, but they did not believe in Jesus. Contrary to what my friend says, to see is not to believe.

Now, that’s also exactly what God told his prophet Samuel in the First Reading today. The Lord sent Samuel off to select the next king of Israel, but first he warned his prophet not to make any judgment based on appearances. In the Lord’s words: “Not as man sees does God see because man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart.” In other words, to see is not to believe.

And so with this directive, the prophet happily went about his mission, remembering not to choose based on what he saw. But then what did God proceed to do the very next breath? He made his choice of the next king based precisely on appearances! The passage goes: “David was ruddy, a youth handsome to behold and making a splendid appearance. The Lord said, ‘There—anoint him, for this is the one!’”

Actually, reading that this morning made me laugh out loud. Just when the prophet Samuel believed God that to see is not to believe, and took his word for it, God pulls the rug from under his feet and does just the opposite. It seems to me that God isn’t just telling us that “to see is not to believe,” but something even more important. Through the story of Samuel and David, he also seems to be saying that “to believe is to see!”

Our limited vision and our finite reason can never fully explain or make adequate predictions about God. God’s ways, after all, are not our ways, and because God is God, he is truly a God of surprises. For this reason, to see is truly not to believe. We cannot decide to believe simply based on what we see or what we think. What is legitimate in the realm of science becomes reversed when it comes to God and the spiritual life. Whereas in science, “to see is to believe,” in matters of faith, “to believe is to see.” Only after we decide to believe will we stop being blind. We must first believe, and then we shall see.

If this season of Lent, you are still waiting for some scientific or religious proof before believing, wait no longer.  Make God wait no longer. Make the decision to believe, and then you will see.

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