“Do you enjoy wallowing in your ignorance?” I remember one day in high school when our Jesuit English teacher asked the class that question. We deserved the question. Faced with a lazy group of male tenth graders, his normal abundance of patience was dwindling. We were, in fact, wallowing in our ignorance like pigs wallow in mud.

That question, insulting as it may seem, made me understand that I had to take ownership for my life; it was up to me to see what the world, my faith, my opportunities had to offer and help shape my life. Wallowing in ignorance allowed me to keep my eyes shut to the responsibilities of life. As a group, we basked in ignorance and refused to see the beauty of the life God had given us and our responsibilities to that life.

In our Gospel, Jesus cures a blind man, frees him from that blindness so that he can now see the world around him. In the process, he not only sees the world, but he also gains faith in the man who opened his eyes. The man suffered from both physical and spiritual blindness.

The physical gift of sight is a marvelous gift, one that we do not fully appreciate until that gift becomes damaged in some way. Just ask anyone who has had a cataract operation how much differently they see after the operation.

In today’s miracle, Jesus opens the eyes of the man born blind, but he goes one step further. Not only can the man see the physical world, but now, too, he can grasp the spiritual world. The formerly blind man can see the world around him not only with physical eyes, but with the eyes of faith.

The Pharisees in the Gospel would have nothing to do with this man’s newfound vision of the world and his blossoming faith in the one who cured him. Rather, they preferred to wallow in their ignorance and remain blind to Jesus, the man of faith. They could not make that leap from where they were to where they could and should be.

The excitement about Jesus teaches us that the more we learn about him, the greater he becomes in our lives. The more we learn about Jesus, the more we understand how different he is from us. I get so very disappointed when I hear people speak about Jesus as a wonderful person. He is indeed that, but he is so much more. He is God incarnate.

The difficulty with remaining locked in our human perception of Jesus as a great man is that we make him equal to us. That stage of understanding is ok as we mature. But we must get to the higher level of understanding. Some fear going there because they know that a greater understanding of Jesus will put more demands on them and perhaps require a change. We can put off changing our lives for another human being. Can we really put off changing our lives for our God?

Faith is a journey. When we stop looking for more, we remain stagnant. Paul tells us that we are children of the light and that our darkness was, like the man in today’s Gospel, removed by Christ.

Blaise Pascal said it well: “In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadow to blind those who don’t.”

As we make our faith journey through this year’s Lent, may we grow in our relationship with Jesus so that like the man in today’s Gospel, we can fall on our knees and say: “I do believe, Lord.” Or like Doubting Thomas: “My Lord, and my God.” Or like the man in the gospel: “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”