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Gracious God help us to see with the eyes of Jesus.
Today's exceptionally long Gospel is trying to open our eyes. Where are our blind spots? Do we have certain situations, like the Pharisees, where we refuse to believe despite what we are seeing?
Even though it was almost comical to see the lengths the Pharisees went to 'to not see" the obvious, I think the writer was trying to illustrate the various ways we human beings can refuse to see. How many times have we not seen what is staring us in the face? The Pharisees stumbled through various gyrations trying to disprove that Jesus restored the slight of a blind man.
How many times have I spun actions so they fit in with what I want to believe about friends or politicians? How many times have I refused to let facts challenge my strongly held beliefs and/or opinions? I can be so sure I am right that I dismiss the possibility of looking at something from a different perspective. I can rationalize just about anything so I don't have to "see" another way of looking at an issue or an interaction. Rationalizing is so much easier than to trying to "see" and "live as children of the light" as Saint Paul reminds us in his Letter to the Ephesians.
We humans are funny...the convolutions we put ourselves through so that facts don't interfere with our strongly held beliefs. We see what we want to see and often what we expect to see regardless of what just happened.
During Lent we can take the time to examine our experiences that prevent us from seeing. God is calling us to see with the Creator's eyes, not our human eyes in the first reading. We are being gently reminded to see people for who are, not what they look like. What prevents from seeing all people as children of God?
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