Vision and hoarding pita chips and toilet paper: Fourth Sunday of Lent

“Who are these sinners?” Dante asked Virgil. “From their haircuts, I see that many of them were priests. Were they all priests on this side?” “These sinners were incontinent when it came to wealth,” Virgil replied. “Neither group could control themselves. One group hoarded their wealth, while the other group wasted their wealth. Many of the sinners you see here were Popes, cardinals, and priests — such people are unfortunately prone to greediness.”  Dante's Inferno, Canto 7

Readings for the Fourth Sunday of Lent

Dateline.... March 18, 2020 ...the Seattle Times, anchoring the center of the Global Coronavirus pandemic

This from the Seattle Times newspaper. One woman in Seattle spoke about why she was storing pita chips in her dishwasher. She said,

 “My biggest personal fear is social disruption…Like, I think the biggest need that I’m going to have for the pita chips that are in my dishwasher is when the state of Washington says, ‘Don’t leave your house.’ And then I’m going to be really sorry if I don’t have those pita chips.”

It should be noted, that even in the “total shutdown” people are permitted to leave their homes to go shopping. Still, the instinct remains; When the apocalypse comes, store up some snacks??? Why do people think like this? Steven Taylor, a professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia diagnosed it as follows,

“I think everyone has their individual degree of risk they’re prepared to assume — and that’s an individual choice,” said. “It’s sensible to have a two-week supply of medication and sanitary items and food. That’s fine. And so I can understand why people would stock up on that. You do that without panicking. You can prepare without panicking.”

 But hoarding toilet paper? Pita chips in the dishwasher? What’s with that?

“For me it’s fascinating … It might seem weird that people wo hoard toilet paper because toilet paper is not going to prevent you from getting infected. I think what’s happening is this is going viral with images of people panic-buying toilet paper.  Social media has made this pandemic different from other ones in that all these dramatic images of empty shelves and shopping carts spread planet wide in a matter of moments, and that can inflate people’s sense of threat.  In the minds of people, it’s become a symbol of safety, and these symbols, they need not be rational,”

Toilet paper is to the denizens of the coronavirus epidemic as the blanket is to Linus, the character in the Peanuts cartoon. Question: What is going on? Answer: A failure of sight and a lack of vision.
From the center of the coronavirus pandemic, this is Oro Valley Catholic and this is Fr. John Arnold. Ok, fine. Not really the geographical center; but I am sticking with my main point.

The Gospel: The Man Born Blind
“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents,
that he was born blind?”  Jn. 9:1-2
 
Neither, Jesus would answer, but that the work of God can be made manifest. Maybe that will be the hopeful effect of this pandemic. We need some light. The Gospel emphasizes light and dark, seeing and not seeing. At the beginning of the gospel John speaks of Jesus:

All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Jn. 1:3-5

Jesus the light of the world
For the purposes of this Gospel, think of vision as more important than sight. Having vision is having insight, understanding and perception.  Sight is just information without insight, understanding and perception. Christ is seeing, denying Christ is blindness to reality. So, in this Gospel, physical blindness is being used as a metaphor for spiritual blindness.  Here are some key ideas in this passage:

• Number one, there is a relationship between sin and suffering, between sin and the blindness of this particular man. People assume that his blindness is his fault, that is, some sin of his. His suffering is inflicted by other human beings. Human’s stigmatize bodies.  Fat people are gluttons; skinny people are bulimics. The disciples assume that his blindness arises from his personal sin or of the sin of his parents. They asked Jesus "who sinned, this man or his parents?” Jesus has vision. He responds, "neither this man nor his parents, but his blindness in this case is so that the work of God might be manifest in him." The higher purpose, in this story, is that Jesus is revealed as the light of the world.   Jesus performs the miracle declaring "I am the light of the world." So, this story is about light; vision.
• Number two, Jesus doesn’t say anything as he heals; we are supposed to see. Instead, Jesus spits on the ground and makes clay out of the dust and anoints the man’s eyes. Get that image in your mind.  St. Irenaeus understood the passage this way. Jesus was remaking the human person from mud. The Dead Sea scrolls also contain this tradition that God created Adam by combining spit and clay. When Jesus acts, he is speaking to the culture.  So the Jews had this tradition that God made Adam from spit and clay. Jesus is making a new creation. Remember, also, that in Genesis it said that God breathed on Adamah; so in John’s Gospel, when Jesus gives the gift of the Holy Spirit, Jesus breathes on his disciples.  John 20:22. We will read that passage after Easter.
• Number three, Jesus spits and makes clay and commands the man to wash with water. To wash in the water of the pool of Siloam. The early Church saw this as a symbol of baptism. That the new creation of man comes from Jesus through our baptism when we are washed as the blind man washed.

Of course the Pharisees have no vision, only sight. The see Jesus healing on the Sabbath. So they see the Sabbath, but not the work of God on the Sabbath. When the scriptures say the Jews didn’t believe, don’t get lost. The man who was healed was a Jew. He believed. The disciples were Jews, they believed. Jesus is being rejected not by the Jews at large, but by some of the authorities in Jerusalem.
 
In this story see the journey From Blindness to Sight and from Sight to Blindness
The Pharisees said to the blind man "you were born in utter sin. Would you teach us?" So they assume, the man had illness and sickness in the form of his blindness so he had done something wrong. Some diseases are rooted in behavior, so the Pharisees are not completely off the tracks. 100% of drug addicts are addicted by drugs. Yet, clearly the Pharisees lack understanding and insight into the meaning of Jesus’ healing. Why do they think that healing a blind man on the Sabbath is a sin? They, not all Jews probably, had become far too legalistic in their interpretations. Any human being, regardless of belief or non-belief can become legalistic.
 
The blind man, however, has a different path. First, when asked, he doesn’t know who healed him. Then, the man born blind thinks his healer is a prophet, then upon further reflection, he is a man sent from God and finally, the realization that he is in fact the Lord.  God himself, the divine son of God. So, this miracle leads the man born blind to sight and then understanding and worship.   The Pharisees  are lead into rejecting Jesus. This story reveals that that true blindness is the inability to see who Jesus is; the Son of God. That blindness continues today.
 
Pope St. Leo the Great, from the early Church, wrote that, “what was visible in our Savior, Jesus’ public ministry, has passed over into his mysteries” that is, the sacraments. In Greek, the word for sacrament is mustērion. Sacrament comes from the Latin translation of mustērion. St. Leo’s point is that the same God who healed the man born blind is at work in baptism and the other sacraments. That takes vision, insight and faith-filled perception; otherwise all you see is male, female, water, bread, wine and oil.   The ancient Christians referred to the sacraments as the mysteries.
 
You don’t need faith to believe that there is some dark thread that runs through all human beings, in all places, at all times.  Catholics call that original sin. Not just the sin of our ancestors, but some flaw that continues in our own personal origin story. In ancient Christianity, one of the favorite names for the sacrament of Baptism was the sacrament of illumination; the gift of Enlightenment. In baptism we receive spiritual illumination to be able to see the truths of faith through the gift of faith.  The man born blind is each of us, born into original sin and blindness. Jesus came to restore our sight. His work is present in the sacraments and doctrine.

Conclusion
In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul said that we once walked in darkness, but now in Christ’s life.

“For once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is a shame even to speak of the things that they do in secret; but when anything is exposed by the light it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore, it is said, "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.” Eph. 5:8-14

 We are living in a difficult time. It is very human to get upset and start storing pita chips in the dishwasher. Maybe, understandable under the circumstances. A coronavirus zombie apocalypse, however, is probably not coming.  In one Hollywood zombie epic, a character’s reason for living is finding Twinkies. Twinkies, as is well known, have a half-life to rival Uranium 235. The pandemonium that Hollywood feeds us, doesn’t reflect real life.
 
Professor Taylor, the Canadian psychologist I talked about earlier, opined that the fear will subside as reality sets in.  In past pandemics, Taylor said,

“People pulled together, there’s been altruism. There’s been people helping each other out. And I’m hoping that that’s going to happen this time around. The people will pull together and realize, ‘Oh, I need to think beyond just my family. I need to help out my neighbor who’s too sick to go and shop for herself,’ and things like that. So if this is anything like previous outbreaks, there should be more of that, I hope, naturally arising.”

 That is a hopeful note, and rings of the truth. We at St. Mark can be ahead of the curve, because we see the empty shelves, but don’t succumb to the fear. We all have rational needs and we should take reasonable care. This a time, however, when character is tested and virtue proved. There will be toilet paper and Twinkies enough to go around, I suspect. Toilet paper at any rate. This is not, after all, a dysentery epidemic.
 
Oro Valley Catholic  - Doing fine - but laying low.