The Blind Will See

“Once you let go of the world in a spirit of detachment, once you remove the things of this world from your grasp and see them without distortion, you will really have them. They will appear as they are, as God intended them. They will no longer be objects for your manipulation or possession but beautiful realities in themselves.”

- Bishop Robert Barron

“Word is starting to get out” I think to myself as I look into the pair of eyes staring back at me. From the white corner of her eye an invasive, fleshy growth extends its unwelcome branches over her once colorful and perfectly symmetrical iris. In the eyes of the last patient, I recall, the pupils were barely noticeable behind this intrusive stranger known to medical professionals as a pterygium. The next patient, an older man guided into the office by the hand of his wife, complains of progressive blurry vision over the past few years. A quick look into his eyes reveals a cloudiness that obstructs even my own vision- in it I notice the absence of my reflection. He suffers from the infamous cataract. Then arrives a child who struggles to learn in school- she cannot make out the words and formulas on the chalkboard. Her parents worry about her future without an adequate education. By the end of the month a notebook boasts a list of over two hundred names of men, women, and children whose lives have been affected by failing vision, more than two hundred persons eagerly anticipating a clearer view of the world around them.

***

Age and atmosphere eventually take their toll on the human senses, especially here in the remote and wild Amazon rainforest. Callused hands and feet are slowly desensitized by arduous days of manual labor and barefoot journeys on rocky, uneven ground. Monotonous taste buds are reluctantly summoned by the salt- and sugar-limiting ailments of high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes. Deafened ears are repeatedly sounded by the constant noise of a restless, moving world slowly inching its way into the farthest stretches of the undisturbed tropics. And foggy eyes are progressively faded by years of unprotected sun exposure while harvesting land and traversing the reflective waters of the Napo River. Upon first glance, the inevitable deterioration of the senses appears to be a rather bleak reality. However, it is precisely in this distortion of the human senses that we encounter within our hearts the one sense capable of perceiving an unseen, deeper, and more fruitful reality. Faith. It is this sense that allows us to feel the intangible, savor the subtle sweetness in the overwhelming bitterness, listen attentively in the deafening silence, and walk blindly in the uninviting darkness. Through faith we see truth, beauty, and goodness in the world around us- as they are, as God intended, beautiful realities within themselves.

***

The long-anticipated Ophthalmology team from Spain finally appears in our narrow field of vision. In an instant, a small hospital perched along the banks of the Napo River, practically invisible and unknown to the rest of the world, transcends the gap separating two distant continents. With a long list of patients and only two weeks to accomplish their vision-saving operation, the team makes no delay and gets to work right away. Just as the Ophthalmology team has traveled the wavering air currents over the Atlantic Ocean, so too have patients traversed the calmer waters of the Napo River to arrive in Santa Clotilde. Community health workers from rural health posts begin to arrive with boatfuls of people who, for some, may be experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Special eye equipment survives the 24 hour boat ride from the city of Iquitos, and the hospital anxiously prepares extra beds and food for the imminent rush of patients. However, the challenge doesn’t stop there. Despite torrential rainfall, intermittent electricity blackouts, a faulty generator, and anywhere from twelve to sixteen hour work days, the visiting Ophthalmology team attends to 340 patients, performs 84 eye surgeries, and prescribes 223 pairs of glasses. Three hundred and forty lives seen, heard, touched- transformed.

Two weeks pass, and it is no coincidence that the departure of our Ophthalmology team aligns with the feast day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. On this special day the Church recognizes and celebrates the culmination of our holy Mother’s grace-filled life- her Heavenly entrance into God’s kingdom. Fully human just like us, Mary teaches us how faith transcends all limitations and defects of the human senses and gives us access to this same Heavenly reception. In listening without understanding, she is attentive to the request of a spiritual messenger of God even when such a task seems impossible. In feeling without touching, she nurtures new life within her womb without the intimate embrace of man and woman. In savoring without first tasting, she urges and trusts the conversion of water into wine. And perceiving life after death without seeing, she walks alongside her only Son to His death on the cross where she accepts her role as the Mother of us all. Through faith her human senses become undistorted, her gifts unpossessed and freely given, her soul fully surrendered to God’s beautiful reality.

A few weeks later a patient arrives with good news. “I can see again.” After undergoing cataract surgery, he sees the world differently, more clearly. And as he explains his experience of transformation I, too, begin to see more vividly the reality staring back at me. I sense the work of faith. It is faith that first brought a group of missionaries here decades ago to share and know God’s love. Faith that built a hospital to serve a suffering and abandoned people. Faith that formed an inseparable bond of trust and friendship between natives and strangers physically separated by space and time. Faith that sustains a hospital’s mission amidst the face of immense physical and emotional human suffering, interpersonal violence and injustice, and government corruption. Faith that brought the father of an ophthalmologist to serve long-term in Santa Clotilde and his daughter to offer her gifts and talents for the sake of others. Faith that attracted hundreds of patients to place their trust in someone and something outside of themselves. Faith, the hidden yet life-sustaining roots beneath the surface, the gateway to restored and unobstructed vision.

And in the blink of an eye, I am reminded that in the distortion and corruption of our human senses, the gift of faith renews us into the image in which we were created. As He restores our vision in His image, we appear as we are, as we are intended to be- fully surrendered, truly free, and beautiful in ourselves. I am reminded that only in letting go can we truly have that which is worth having.

“Faith is the virtue upon which Christianity rests and is the capacity to see beyond the senses to a deeper or higher reality…To be a person of faith is to know that the universe of the senses is but the tip of the iceberg, a gateway.” 

- Bishop Robert Barron