Readings (Year A):
1 Samuel 16:1b, 6–7, 10–13a
Psalm 23: 1–3a, 3b–4, 5, 6
Ephesians 5:8–14
John 9:1–41
Reflection: Out of clay, divinity
In his book Anam Cara (Harper Perennial), John O’Donohue calls the human person “a clay shape, living in the medium of air.” He speaks of each of us as “a meeting place of the four elements” and writes, “In your clay body, things are coming to expression and to light that were never known before, presences that never came to light or shape in any other individual.”
I think of O’Donohue’s words as I parse this week’s gospel. The transformation of the man born blind begins in a mixture of clay and saliva, much in the way that Adam is formed “out of the clay of the ground” in Genesis 2:7. In both instances, inanimate matter is used to draw forth new life—physical life in the case of Adam, the new life of faith in the case of the man born blind. The breath of God the Father that quickens the clay in Genesis becomes the spit of Christ the Son that alchemizes it in the Gospel of John. Coupling these images, we might envision vapor condensing into liquid, just as the Father condenses the spaciousness of his mystery into the form of the Son.
The restoration of the man’s sight happens in several distinct stages. First is the healing itself, where Jesus applies the clay and commands him to wash, and he comes back able to see. But it is the sharpening of his vision, the passage from sight into insight, that is the real story of the gospel.
Immediately after his healing, the man returns to the circle of his neighbors, who do not recognize him; they are “blind” to his new appearance, even though only the organ of his perception has changed. He recounts how he received his sight, but when they ask him where his healer is, he claims not to know.
Next, he encounters the Pharisees. Once again, his account is focused on the surface details of his healing—yet notice how his knowledge deepens as the teachers of the law continue to probe. When they ask him, “What do you have to say about him?”—a variation on the neighbors’ question, “Where is he?”—he admits an instinctual understanding of his healer’s nature: “He is a prophet.”
After a brief interlude where they interview the man’s parents, the crowd summons him for another cross-examination. Perhaps his patience is beginning to be tested, but I like to think that his assertiveness in this section is rooted in his strengthening faith. He grasps with even greater clarity the significance of what has happened to him—not just corporeally, but on a theological plane as well. It feels like he is on the cusp of some great realization, which will come in the final scene of the reading.
Here he finds himself face-to-face with Jesus, who asks him: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” After so many rounds of interrogation, it is his turn to pose the question. The “where” and the “what” of the neighbors and Pharisees now become a pronoun centered on the person: “Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus reveals his true identity, and the man’s assent to worship him is the consummation of his vision.
“The recognition of our clay nature can bring us a more ancient harmony,” O’Donohue writes. “It can return us to the ancient rhythm that we inhabited before consciousness made us separate.” Christ, who has divinized the clay nature of Adam, here uses that same substance to give a man spiritual sight and so reopens a pathway from separateness to unity.
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