Whenever an  affliction is not  the  result of acts of the present life, one must search for their cause in a previous one. Whatever is called a whim of chance is no more than the effect of God’s  justice. God does not inflict arbitrary punishment; God always wills for a correlation to exist between the wrong and the punishment. If in the divine goodness God has cast a veil over our past acts, God nevertheless points the way to us by saying: “Whoever has killed with the sword shall perish by the sword,” words that may be translated as, “The punishment is always according  to the sin.” Therefore, if someone suffers the torment of the loss of sight, it is because sight was for him or her a cause of downfall. Also, it could be that the person was the cause of the loss of someone else’s sight; perhaps someone had become blind as a result of excess work having been imposed or as a result of mistreatment, lack of care, etc., and now the person is suffering the penalty of talion. The person him or herself could have chosen such expiation, applying these words of Jesus personally: “If your eye is a cause for scandal, pluck it out.”