«Rabbi, who sinned—this man or his parents?» In John's Gospel (9:1–7), the disciples pose this question to Jesus as they encounter a man born blind. It is a question that reaches us across the centuries, carrying all its force and all its doubt. Behind it lies a conviction deeply rooted in Jesus's time—and I believe in ours as well: certain misfortunes or illnesses are a kind of punishment. If you have sinned, God punishes you by sending something terrible. But God punishes no one. With sin, the only thing God knows how to do is show mercy—to forgive. We are the ones who, burdened by guilt, imagine ourselves punished or believe ourselves responsible for someone else's disability or illness.
But then where does evil come from? Why do we struggle today against a pandemic? In the Gospel, Jesus responds: «Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him.» What does this mean? First, that sin has nothing to do with it, and that the man's blindness does not come from God. What we do know is that life itself teaches us about fragility and limit: no one can imagine escaping illness forever or avoiding difficulty. Yet in every situation—especially the hardest ones—God seeks our good. The «works of God» that Jesus speaks of are all the good that God wants to do for us, to sustain us through difficulty and help us overcome it. We cannot simply stand and watch, of course; we must ally ourselves with the good that God wishes to accomplish. God, after all, is the creator. He knows only how to do good. The question of evil remains open, without a final answer—but we can say this: apart from the evil we ourselves do, because we misuse God's gifts, blindness and illness are the occasions where good can emerge, where the love God awakens in our hearts can bloom. Is this not what we experience at Fede e Luce?