Have you ever thought of yourself as being spiritually blind? Or perhaps you were reading scripture or the Catechism and came across a passage that you just could not grasp. If so, then this week’s readings are for you. In our first reading the great prophet Jeremiah is giving us a prophecy about the coming Messiah. He sees this person as healing the blind and the lame and how He loves His people Israel. The writer to the Hebrews follows up on this and speaks of Jesus as our High Priest in the order of Melchizadek.
Now Melchizadek is an interesting guy. He was a priest and the king of Salem. (Salem is from the Hebrew word “Shalom”, meaning peace. Later Salem becomes
Jeru-Salem, which means the “city of peace”. (I find this somewhat ironic considering all the violence that has gone on there. But I digress…) Melchizadek offers up bread and
wine. Is any of this sounding familiar? High Priest, King of peace, bread and wine? All of this was fulfilled by our Lord Jesus.
In the gospel we have poor blind Bartimeus. He hears of Jesus and starts yelling for Him. Here is a man who truly believed without seeing! Finally Jesus comes to Him and tells him that his faith has saved him, and immediately he receives his sight. This is powerful not only as a fulfillment of prophecy and an incredible display of our Lord’s divinity, but also as something we can reflect on. We may not be physically blind, but often times we are spiritually blind, and often simply refuse to see. I think we should learn from Bartimeus. What did he do? He called out to our Lord. He trusted that Jesus would help him to see. We too should ask God to give us insights through calling on the Holy Spirit and asking for wisdom. Often we make life changing decisions without even a word of prayer. I think we need to use prayer and cry out to our Lord. Ask for His will to be done in our lives and allow us to be willing to accept it. Sometimes our biggest obstacles are ourselves. So this week, take some time to ask God to give you insights and to open your spiritual eyes and be willing to do His will. If we do this then we too like Bartimeus, will truly see…Something to think about…May God richly bless you always…
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