Episode Transcript  

One

The Blindness of Sin

We are all familiar with the hymn Amazing Grace, and the first verse ends with, “I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see.” One of Christ’s most iconic and controversial miracles was healing the man born blind. And that man is all of us. 

Blindness has always been a powerful image of what sin does to us, and all of us, born into original sin, are born with temptations that cloud our vision and keep us from seeing the full truth. Now when we say that sin makes us blind, what we really mean is that sin makes it impossible for us to pay attention to anything other than one small, particular thing. And that sinful desire gradually becomes our entire world. Our whole universe shrinks down until it revolves around one petty, pathetic little thing, and that one thing becomes everything to us, the only thing we can see.

The only way to counteract that blindness is to force ourselves to meditate on the truth of reality that goes beyond our temptation. Daily meditation is our only chance to see, and our only chance to see God.

Two

Lust

There are three great forms of spiritual blindness. St. John calls them the threefold concupiscence. These diseases are lust, greed, and pride. And if we’re not careful, those things will blind us till we can only see one small, tiny, and relatively unimportant sliver of reality.

The most obvious form of spiritual blindness is lust. Lust does what every sin does: it rips a good thing out of its proper context. It rips sex out of its context and forgets about the rest of the universe that sex is a part of. So to fight this sickness, this blindness, it’s up to us to meditate on the great, beautiful world that God has made, in which sex plays an important but ultimately a small role.

All around sex, there is greater beauty and order, and sex itself is just one step in the universe of love and goodness. The love of the Father for His Son, and the love of both for the Spirit. The love of God for humanity, the love of Christ for His Church. The heroic love until death of a husband and wife. The love of parents for their children that sex naturally leads to. The love of the priesthood and Religious Orders that receive their members from marriages, and whose prayers in turn support marriages and make families holy and healthy.

That’s the astonishing magnificence of the mosaic of love, why would you throw away such a masterpiece and settle for just one of its little fragments of colored glass? No, meditate on the mosaic, on the extravagant tapestry of divine and human love that sex comes from and that sex leads to. Then your vision will clear, then you will not have a blindness restricted to the part, but you will be able to see the whole.

Three

Greed

The second kind of blindness is greed. It’s the distorted vision that sees dollar signs where we should see the gifts of the earth, meant to be received, shared, and enjoyed. We reduce our work, meant to be a participation in God’s creative love, to a mere paycheck. We reduce education, meant to shape our intellect and will, to a stepping stone toward a higher salary, forming our identity not in the image of Truth, but in the image of income.

Greed reduces all decisions to financial calculus, gain, cost, or opportunity cost, while ignoring love, beauty, and virtue. It fuels anxious striving, making us lash out when the car gets dented, overwork ourselves, and constantly fear the future. It turns generosity and rest into threats to the bottom line. Greed blinds us to God’s providence and convinces us we never have enough.

But what is money? At its root, it’s a sign that we’ve served others. It represents real goods: food, shelter, transportation, and the opportunity to give. Money only has meaning because we are made to give and receive. To break greed’s grip, give. Use money for its highest purpose: love of neighbor. That’s the deepest beauty of money. Don’t let greed blind you to it.

Four

Egoism

The most vicious form of blindness is pride. It’s the blindness where you feature so largely in your own imagination, and thinking, and decision-making, that, before long, you start acting like you’re the only person who matters. It’s the blindness that takes us most directly to hell, that is, to a universe where we are utterly, radically, and eternally alone. 

And the only way to fight this blindness is to meditate on the goodness of other people. To take delight in the gifts they have that you don’t have. To be fascinated in their story, which is so different than your story, and yet is truly beautiful, because God is its author, and God doesn’t write any uninteresting stories. When you meditate on the goodness of other people, you’ll find yourself praying for them. Praying that God helps them make the most of the unique goodness He’s given them. 

When you really allow yourself to become interested in other people, when you take delight in their goodness, and take even more delight in the thought of their goodness reaching its full perfection, then you are getting close to purity of heart. Then you are getting close to being ready to see God.

Five

Pure of Heart, Pure of Vision

Sin diminishes sight. That means sin makes it impossible for us to pay attention to anything other than one small, particular thing. And that sinful desire gradually becomes our entire world. Our whole universe shrinks down until it revolves around one petty, pathetic little thing, and that one thing becomes everything to us, the only thing we can see.

The only way to counteract that blindness is to turn back to God, sit with him, and meditate, which means to think about the reality that goes beyond our temptation. Daily meditation is our only chance to see reality and our only chance to see God. That thinking about truth in meditation, like we are doing right here in the Rosary, must then lead to a strategy for the day, a concrete resolution. 

Suggested Resolutions:

Choose one resolution for today to help you grow closer to God, or create your own. Here are some ideas to inspire you. 

• Stop this afternoon or evening and think, what do I really want, this temptation or God? What really leads to peace, what really lasts, what do I want in the end? 

If you enjoyed this meditation, subscribe below.