He begins by obeying Christ and going to the Pool of Siloam to wash his eyes.
Once cured, he becomes an object of interest, a cause of comment, a point of contention because he just will not tell people what they want to hear about him. I was indeed born blind; I am not a sinner (imagine having to feel guilty because someone works a miracle on you!).Or about Christ: he is not a sinner or a deceiver or an agent of evil; but he really did make me see!
Only when he has finally resisted all the temptations and pressures to back off from the truth of his encounter with Jesus, does he get to meet Jesus again (although they need to be reintroduced). In this meeting, though, his obedience and his truth telling (a kind of early evangelizing, like the Woman of Samaria's declaration that Jesus had told her 'everything' about herself) leads to a more powerful result he knows who to worship, who God really is and where to find him.The healed Blind Man is ourselves. We know Christ, we know his power to save, we know his victory over death. And yet, we need strength and courage and a stubborn faithfulness in order to resist the forces that would promise us 'social security' if only we would soft pedal the importance of Jesus to ourselves, to the world.
You see, our happiness in Christ is less important to others than the illusory happiness, wealth, status, security, confidence in their own judgments that those others find in other places.Saint Paul takes the message one step further. We used to be darkness and full of darkness, but 'in the Lord' we are light, a light the world needs if it is to be free of its imitation of life and bondage to a certain death.
As we go through this time of pestilence, we could easily slip into an assumption that staying well or getting well is more important than anything. If we get sick or die, then we know that we have failed at the most important task in life. But, if we understand what the light of faith shows us as we gaze upon the face of the Crucified one, that death is not fatal (how's that for an oxymoron!) unless one dies without God, then 'to die with Christ is only so much gain' (Saint Paul says this somewhere). If we hold on to this faith, every sacrifice need to make (even deprivation of Mass or the community of faith, or of family who are or must be quarantined) we will find its proper weight, we will find the strength to make it with equanimity, and our peacefulness in every circumstance will become a beacon of light leading even the spiritually blind to seek it's source … the Lord.