Father Steve Adrian 3/22/2020
One of my favorite authors is Flannery O’Connor, and she writes short stories and she’s written a few novels. She comes from the South, from Georgia. And in one of her short stories, she talks about the Gospel in Mark, which is the parallel to the one that the church puts before us today, where Jesus comes into a town and there is a man who cannot see, and they ask Jesus to help this man see, to give him sight. And Jesus takes the man out of town, out beyond the town where He’s alone with the man and it’s there that he puts the paste in the man’s eyes. He holds his hands on the man’s eyes, and then he takes his hands away and He said, “Now can you see?” And the man said, “Yes, but not clearly. I see shadows and I see movement, but I can’t discern who or what it is.”
And once again, Jesus puts His hands on the man’s eyes and holds them tightly and takes them away and he said, “Now, can you see?” And the man said, “Yes, I see everything. Nothing is invisible to me at this point. I see it. I see it.” And then Flannery O’Connor said, in light of the Sundays Gospel and that gospel from Mark, “Each one of us, each one of us has our eyes touched by the Lord twice. The first time is in the moment of our baptism. Our eyes are open, the gift of faith is given. And throughout our lives, we live that faith, but we don’t see things perfectly. We struggle to see beyond what we’re capable of seeing.
And the second time that the Lord touches our eyes is the moment we close those eyes in physical death and open those eyes before the Lord and then we see perfectly. There is no shadow. All is clear.” Well, as we pray today, we pray that the enlightenment that was first given to us in baptism, that grace may continue to grow within us. And that more and more we can see the hand of God working not only in our lives, but in the lives of those around us.
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