John 9:34Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

What do the words mean, "You were altogether born in sins"? Here they mercilessly reproach him for the blindness itself. It is as though they say, From your earliest age you have been in sins, implying that this was why he was born blind. But this is unjust. Therefore Christ, comforting him in this, said, "For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind" (Jn 9:39).

"You were altogether born in sins, and do you teach us?" What did this man say? Did he express his own opinion? Did he not set forth a common judgment when he said, "We know that God does not listen to sinners"? Did he not quote your own words? "And they cast him out." Do you see the preacher of truth, and how poverty was no obstacle to wisdom? Do you see what he heard and endured from the very beginning, and how he bore witness by both word and deed?

This was written so that we also may be imitators. If a poor blind man, who had not even seen Christ and had not yet been deemed worthy of encouragement from Him, at once showed such boldness that he stood against an entire people, raging, breathing murder and madness. And wishing from his words to condemn Christ, and if he did not yield or renounce his words, but with full boldness stopped their mouths and preferred to be cast out rather than betray the truth, how much more must we do so. We have lived so long in the faith. We have seen countless miracles accomplished through faith. We have been benefited more than he. We have gained sight with the inner eyes. We have contemplated ineffable mysteries and have been called to such great honor. Should we not much more show every boldness for Christ against those who try to slander Christians and say something against them? Should we not stop the mouths of such people, and not agree with them senselessly?

We shall be able to do this when we possess boldness and attend to the Scriptures, rather than listening to them carelessly. Whoever comes here constantly, even if he does not read at home but only attends to what is said here, will have one year enough to gain great experience. We do not read one Scripture today and another tomorrow, but always and constantly the same one. Yet there are many so pitiable that, despite such reading, they do not even know the names of the books. They are neither ashamed nor trembling, though they attend the divine school so negligently.

If a cithara player, a dancer, or someone else belonging to the theater summons the city, everyone runs in haste. They thank him for the invitation and spend half a day attending to him alone. But when God speaks with us through the prophets and apostles, we yawn, scratch ourselves, and are bored. In summer it seems too hot to us, and we go off to the marketplace. In winter rain and mud again become an obstacle, and we sit at home.

At the racecourses, where there is no roof to protect from rain, numerous spectators stand under pouring rain and wind that throws water in their faces. They rage and pay no attention to cold, rain, mud, or the length of the road. Nothing keeps them at home. Nothing prevents them from appearing there. But here, where there is both a roof and pleasant warmth, they do not come or gather, though this is needed for the good of their own soul.

Tell me, can this be endured? Therefore, being more experienced than all in those matters, we know less than children in what is necessary. If someone calls you a charioteer or a dancer, you consider yourself insulted and make every effort to turn away that reproach. But if he drags you to such spectacles, you do not refuse, and you learn almost completely the very art whose name you avoid. Yet here, where you ought both to know the work and bear the name, and to be and be called a Christian, you do not even know what the work is. What could be worse than such madness?

I would like to speak to you about this constantly. But I fear that I might become hateful to you uselessly and without profit. I see that not only young men behave madly, but also the old. I am especially ashamed for them when I see a man honored with gray hairs dishonoring his gray hairs and dragging a child along with him. What could be more ridiculous and shameful than this? A son learns shameful deeds from his father.

Do these words grieve you? That is what I want, so that by unpleasant words I may restrain you from shameful deeds. There are some far more unfeeling, who not only are not ashamed of what we say, but weave long arguments in defense of such things. If you ask them who Amos or Obadiah is, or how many prophets or apostles there are, they cannot open their mouths. But in defense of horses and charioteers they will present an argument better than sophists and rhetoricians.

After all this they still say: what harm comes from this? What loss? This is why I groan, because you do not even recognize the harm and do not feel the evil. God gave you a definite time of life so that you might serve Him. You spend it emptily, vainly, and without any benefit, and then ask, What loss is there?

When you spend even a little money in vain, you call it a loss. But when you spend whole days of your life on satanic spectacles, you think you are doing nothing blameworthy. You ought to spend your whole life in prayers and supplications. Instead, you spend your life on shouts, noise, filthy speech, quarrels, untimely amusements, and conjurers' tricks. You spend it vainly and to your own destruction, and after all this you ask, What loss is there?

Do you not know that time must be guarded most of all? If you spend gold, you can acquire it again. If you lose time, it is hard to recover it, because little of it has been given to us for the present life. Therefore, if we do not use it for what we should, what shall we say when we appear there?

Tell me, if you ordered one of your sons to learn some craft, but he always stayed at home or spent his time somewhere else, would the teacher not renounce him? Would he not say to you: You made an agreement with me and appointed a term. But if your son spends this time not with me, but somewhere else, how shall I present him to you as trained?

We too must say the same. God will also say to us: I gave you time so that you might learn the art of piety. Why did you spend this time idly and in vain? Why did you not come constantly to the teacher and attend to his words? That piety is truly an art, listen to what the prophet says: "Come, children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord" (Ps 33:12). Elsewhere he says, "Blessed is the man whom You instruct, O Lord, and teach out of Your law" (Ps 93:12). Therefore, when you have spent your time in vain, what defense will you have?

Why, you say, has little time been given to us? What insensibility and ingratitude. You should especially thank the Lord for this, because He has shortened your labors, lessened your struggles, and prepared for you a long and immortal rest. Yet for this you accuse Him and are displeased.

But I do not know how my discourse has moved here and become lengthy. Therefore it is necessary to end it. This, too, is our misfortune: here, if the discourse is prolonged, we all become bored. There they begin at midday and disperse by lamps and torches. But so that I may not always condemn you, we ask and implore you: show this mercy both to us and to yourselves. Leaving everything else, devote yourselves to this study of piety.

In this way we too shall gain joy and gladness through you, deserve praise for you, and receive a reward. But you will receive the whole reward because, though until now you have been given to spectacles with such madness, through the fear of God and because of our exhortations, you have cast off this sickness, broken the bonds, and fled to God. You will not receive a reward there only, but here also you will have the purest enjoyment. Such is virtue. Besides the crowns there, it prepares for us a pleasant life here also.

Let us therefore fulfill what has been said, so that we may attain both the good things here and those there, by the grace and love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ. With Him, to the Father, with the Holy Spirit, be glory unto ages of ages. Amen.

When he reached such bold expressions, they ordered him to be driven out. "And they cast him," says the Evangelist, "out." Blessed is the one who endured expulsion from the assembly of those who act wickedly.

As sons of falsehood, they cast him, the confessor of truth, out of the temple. But this served for his good. Therefore one must be firm and stand unbendingly in confession. One must not deny out of fear, but, if necessary, become excommunicated and cast out of the synagogue, according to what was said: "You will be hated by all for My name's sake," and "they will put you out of the synagogues" (Mt 24:9; Jn 16:2).

Those who have fallen from a ship and are seized by the current cannot resist. Thinking it dangerous to swim against the water, they are carried along by the current alone. In the same way, I think, those of whom we have just spoken are overcome by the dominion of their own passions.

They remove every bridle from them, refusing to oppose them in any way. Therefore the wretched Pharisees are indignant. Gnashing like beasts against the counselor of good, they willingly open the way to anger. Having reached the height of madness, they abuse him without restraint.

Surrendering to their habitual arrogance, they say that the blind man was born in sins. Here they are guided by childish Jewish opinions and ignorantly follow an untenable teaching.

That no one among men is born blind, or with any other bodily defect, strictly because of himself or because of his parents, and that God does not impose the parents' sins on the children, we have already proved, I think, in every way and at length.

We did this when interpreting the saying: "Master, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (Jn 9:2). Therefore, because the former blind man was able to reprove the Pharisees, he is not only reproached, but also cast out by them.

Take this event again as an image of the true matter. Anyone can see, in the words spoken to him by the Pharisees, an indication that the Israelites would abhor the Gentiles as brought up in sins because of their former deception.

They cast him out because the preachers of the teaching about Christ have been rejected and cast out among the Jews.

"And they cast him out." They excommunicated this preacher of truth from the synagogue, as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Since they could not diminish the miracle, and on the contrary had made it still more widely known by their careful investigation, they now turn all their anger upon the healed man.

The Pharisees tried in every way to incline him to their side in their judgment about Jesus. At last he was not afraid even to rebuke the malicious blindness of the Pharisees, who said that they did not know of Jesus "where He is from." "This is the amazing thing," the steadfast confessor of Christ observed. "that you do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes, which is undoubtedly the work of God." The judges could not endure such a bold and sharp rebuke, and they cast the former blind man out of the assembly.

This unbelief does not acknowledge even what it sees and handles. This picture is truly a mirror in which all unbelievers and skeptics, ancient and modern alike, can see themselves.

Indeed, what is all modern so-called negative criticism if not a repetition of these same logical evasions, undertaken in order to undermine the certainty of obvious truths?

The ancient scribes and Pharisees questioned and re-questioned the blind man, his friends, and his parents. They tangled them in verbal arguments and frightened them with the fear of excommunication, only to force them to say no where the evident fact, conscience, and reason plainly said yes.

So also modern critics overturn and distort the gospel proclamation. They call to their aid philosophy, medicine, chance, the play of nature, the laws of illusion and hallucination. In short, they invoke everything plausible that can be named in heaven and on earth.

All this is done in order to prove that the gospel events recorded by eyewitnesses took place not as they are written, but as modern unbelievers and skeptics would like to imagine them.

But all is in vain. Modern critics have only one thing left: fruitlessly to divide into parties and carry on endless disputes among themselves, as also happened with the ancient scribes.

Or, worse still, they resort to violence and abuse. This is what they actually do when, with purely scribal and Pharisaic obstinacy, they reject the reliability of the Gospel narrative.

They accuse the apostles and evangelists of deliberate falsehood. In this way they cast them out of their tribunal as unreliable witnesses. This is the very same thing the scribes did to the healed blind man, who courageously bore witness to the great miracle.

Thus limited and monotonous are the methods of unbelief in its negative argumentation. In the nineteenth century it repeats the very same arguments and methods once expressed and applied with such persistence in the time of Christ Himself. Even then they revealed all their pitiful inconsistency.

Evidently by this they point to his natural blindness and sharply apply to him the opinion that he was punished with such misfortune for special sins, either his own or his parents'. They claim this is God's punishment upon him as an especially great sinner (Jn 9:2).

In their rage they do not see that, by speaking so, they thereby acknowledge the reality of the miracle they deny. If they reproach him because he was born blind for special sins, and yet now see him with sight, then a miracle has truly been performed upon him by Jesus.

"And are you teaching us?" Do you, a complete sinner, dare teach us, the Pharisees, teachers of the people, lawyers and exact fulfillers of the law, righteous and pure? To them, in their pride, blindness, and rage, this seems the greatest absurdity and insolence.

"And they cast him out." That is, out of their assembly, where they had interrogated him and his parents. This was not an official excommunication from the synagogue (Jn 9:22), since the assembly from which the man born blind was cast out was not an official judicial assembly.

For excommunication from the synagogue, a judicial decision of the Sanhedrin or of the synagogue was required. Yet it seems beyond doubt that, having cast him out of their assembly, they did not delay in bringing the matter to official excommunication from the synagogue for such a freethinker, as they regarded him.