Sunday Times 2
What the blind man spoke the deaf couldn’t hear – Appreciations
View(s):Louis Benedict
It has been a year since the passing of Sunday Times deputy editor Louis Benedict (1948–2025). We publish today a tribute written by the late Fr Aloysius Pieris, s.j.
The invitation to hear God occurs over one thousand five hundred times in the Bible; for we cannot see God except at death; for here on earth we can only hear God. But as the same Bible teaches, the serpent—a creature believed to “see” vaguely but deaf (cf. Psalm 50)—tempted Eve to “see” the fruit; and therefore she failed to remember what she ‘heard” from God about the fatal consequence of eating it. We who want to see God fail to hear God.
Louis Benedict is God’s parable about a man who lost his sight and ended up hearing the Word—the Word which he then proclaimed in both the spoken and the written media for those who had ears to hear.
I wonder how many of us heard what the Lord spoke through him: for he was blind and could not see; but he heard the Word that saves and proclaimed it in the words that God’s Spirit prompted to him. Think of his prolific writings and their spiritual depth, forcing even the Editor of the Catholic Messenger (a clergyman with seminary education!) invite this blind layman to write editorials for him? Where did he get his theology?
The answer to that question provides who he was in the divine plan and the unique role he played in the local church according to Divine Providence: the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit; the Spirit whom he first encountered personally as a member of the Charismatic Movement, Pubuduva, in the days when this movement maintained the Holy Spirit’s gift of inter-linguistic harmony; yes the Spirit rested upon Louis as his internal “teacher, advocate and even the personal secretary [prompting the right word at the right moment]” (as Jesus assured in Jn 14:25). What this blind prophet spoke, therefore, needs to be heard. For his whole being was a ministry of the Word.
The credit also goes to the gifted artist Marie, another product of the Pubuduva of that same glorious era when Tamils and Sinhalese prayed together; her role in sustaining Louis as her spouse and redeeming him from a severe and almost lethal depression and accompanying him in his mission “in good times and bad” as his life-long partner will now be amply rewarded by having a heavenly intercessor who will, in his turn, take care of her.
Thank you, Louis; thank you Marie. Those who had ears to hear, gained much by listening to God’s Saving Word heard also in your exemplary marital life.
Aloysius Pieris, s.j.