So, we hear of Jesus performing a great miracle. He makes a blind man see. But what really happened? Did He not do it right the first time? He laid hands on him but then the guy doesn’t get fully cured, right? Then there’s the part about using His spit: that seems least pretty strange, doesn’t it? However, we certainly know that Jesus doesn’t make mistakes. So what's really going on here?
What Jesus does He does for a reason!
Looking at what is happening we see the Lord being quite deliberate. He takes the blind man by the hand and takes him apart, and then we see the stages of the healing.
What comes before in the text shows us Jesus healing and feeding the multitudes. People marvel. The Pharisees attack him. In the middle of it all you can see the disciples are having a hard time making sense and truly believing. Immediately before this miracle of the blind man, Jesus confronts the disciples, “Do you not understand”. This miracle is about the journey of faith and spiritual growth: The call to believe truly with all our being and how that transforms us! This miracle shows the Lord’s grace and action and how we are called to receive it and act upon it so that we become truly doers of the word.
What about Jesus spitting? An interesting point. The Jews had a kind of folk belief that God had made Adam by mixing His spitle with dirt! Spit would signify imparting His life to the man…so here we see Jesus showing that He is God Himself - sharing Himself, His Life with this man - leading him to see, to be transformed!
A few days ago we celebrated the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. Thousands have been miraculously cured there. However, Bernadette, the seer of Lourdes who was quite sickly, was not cured! Instead, she continued to suffer for the rest of her life!
In her writings you can see that she understood clearly that it was through what she suffered, sharing the sufferings of Christ, that the Lord was healing, transforming her on a very deep level and making her a very holy woman, an image of sanctity for us all!
The great miracle we need, and our whole world needs, is that of true faith and true holiness!
That, my friends, is what is most important.
The Lord wants to transform us into doers of the word and our homes into communities where our children grow in holiness! Will we receive His great gift?
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
