If anything of that heavenly light has shone on your eyes, be careful not to vaunt yourself on it as though you had escaped all the darkness of being blind. Do not let your speech make you into one of those who rebelled against the Light by claiming: “Surely we are not blind!”
What you must do rather is to listen to the Light and submit humbly when he says to you, For a little longer the Light is with you, so while you have the Light, believe in the Light, that you may be sons of Light. Blessed be God, who has given us a light to shine out of the darkness!
But if we say that we have a great light in us, when really it is only a little light, we should have to fear that what was little would shrink from littleness into nothingness, and in a little while become darkness. If we would be worthy of being sons of the Light, then we must bewail the darkness which still closes us in on every side. If we are not to be blind, then we must feel no shame in admitting that, in fact, we are blind.
There is great merit in God’s eyes when a man sees his blindness; sees it, bitterly laments it, and takes it to Jesus to be healed.
from Sermon 19 On the Song of Songs by John of Ford (CF 39, pp. 63-64)
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