“I want to see again. I want to see again,” says the blind man to Jesus. It is beautiful story. It is about the healing of blind man. The first time I read this story, I said to myself, this is not for us because we are not blind. Nobody in the community is blind. But when I read it carefully and looked around me, I realized that physically we are not blind. But spiritually we are. We are blind because we don’t see the hands of God in our lives. There are so many good things God is doing in our community. How God blesses us every day with life, children, new people, and jobs. We are blind because we don’t see the treasure we have, the Eucharist, we celebrate daily Mass with very few people. We are blind because we don’t see people like God sees them. We judge people for how they look, how they work and what they have. We don’t see what they are. We don’t see the image of God in each person. All of this leads me to ask myself: Do we see all the people we meet as Jesus sees them or do we ignore some? Who is blind? Or who really sees?
In today’s gospel, we are told the story about the blind man Bartimeus who sat by the roadside begging. On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth passing by, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.” When Jesus saw him, He stopped everything to pay personal attention to him. That’s how important he was to Jesus. I have no doubt that every human being matters to Jesus. Then Jesus asked him: “What do you want me to do for you?” “I want to see”, says the blind man, Jesus cured him. After being healed, he followed Jesus. We can learn a lot from today’s gospel. On one side, we have to recognize and accept that we are blind. Our world is blind. Like Bartimeus, we have to beg Jesus to open our eyes so that we can see all the people we meet as Jesus sees them.
On the other side, today’s gospel challenges us to pay more attention to the forgotten, hungry, those who cry for justice, tragedy, to those the world holds in little regard and to those the world condemns, to the refugees, broken families, those hit by tragedy that never interest television. Because the media, the media blinds us. It presents us superstars in sports, in music, beautiful people, big companies,… nice movies, nice cartoons, what people like to see but it does not present us the other side of the reality. So, blindness needs to be cured. We want to see, Lord. ….we want to see your face through each person we meet. This is the message for today. Let us ask God to open our
eyes so that we can see people like He sees them. This should be our prayer for this week.
