5th December. Friday of Advent, Week 1
First Reading: Isaiah 29:17-24
Great times coming, when deaf shall hear and blind shall see – and all will take instruction.
Shall not Lebanon in a very little while become a fruitful field,
and the fruitful field be regarded as a forest?
On that day the deaf shall hear the words of a scroll,
and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see.
The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the Lord,
and the neediest people shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.
For the tyrant shall be no more,
and the scoffer shall cease to be;
all those alert to do evil shall be cut off –
those who cause person to lose a lawsuit,
who set a trap for the arbiter in the gate,
and without grounds deny justice to the one in the right.
Therefore thus says the Lord, who redeemed Abraham, concerning the house of Jacob:
No longer shall Jacob be ashamed, no longer shall his face grow pale.
For when he sees his children, the work of my hands,
in his midst they will sanctify my name;
they will sanctify the Holy One of Jacob,
and will stand in awe of the God of Israel.
And those who err in spirit will come to understanding,
and those who grumble will accept instruction.
Gospel: Matthew 9:27-31
Jesus cures two blind men and says: “According to your faith let it be done to you.”
As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, crying loudly, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” When he entered the house, the blind men came to him; and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to him, “Yes, Lord.” Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith let it be done to you.” And their eyes were opened. Then Jesus sternly ordered them, “See that no one knows of this.” But they went away and spread the news about him throughout that district.
Dreaming Aloud
As we listen to Isaiah’s visions of the future, we may feel that his poetic hopes ignore all common sense realism. Is he dreaming as he writes: “The deaf shall hear, the eyes of the blind shall see, the tyrant will be no more, Jacob shall have no longer be ashamed”? Something of the same impression can be felt in hearing stories from the Gospel that some would call “pie in the sky. ” Two blind men of Capernaum are cured by Jesus. The cynic will ask about the ninety-eight others who remained blind!
Even today, despite the miraculous works of Jesus there are many deaf people who do not hear, many blind who do not see, many tyrants across the earth, many just people put to shame. Isaiah announced that all this misery would cease in “a very little while”. Yet we are still waiting for this magnificent transformation.
A detail in the Gospel may cast some light on this “little while. ” Jesus did not cure the two blind men right away. They followed him at some distance, shouting, “Son of David, have pity on us!” They caught up with Jesus, only when he had arrived at the house where he was staying that night, and only then did he touch their eyes and they were cured. We too must follow Jesus expressing our dearest hopes – but also with patience. Jesus waited until the two blind men had caught up with him. We must seek Jesus himself even more than the gift that we are praying about, trusting that he can and will show us his loving compassion. He asked the two blind men: “Do you believe I can do this?” Only when they answered, “Yes, Lord!” did he touch their eyes and heal them. The Lord can help us only when we have faith in his goodness and let him touch us where we are weak and in need. As he touched them, he said, “Because of your faith, it shall be done to you. ” When the Lord touches us, the prophet Isaiah’s words come true. In that “very little while” there is an interchange of love and confidence – and we can grow to our full selves.
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Two blind men who came up to Jesus asking him to take pity on them. He responds to them initially, not by healing them but by asking them a question, “Do you believe that I can do this?” Jesus first elicited an act of expectant faith from the two blind men before he responded to their cry for help. We have been through a difficult time in the life of the church in Dublin in recent weeks. As the two blind men who approached Jesus lived in darkness, so we have been and still are in dark times. We can easily make our own the prayer of the two men in the gospel, “Take pity on us, Son of David.” In response to that cry for help, the Lord is asking us too to have an expectant faith. He calls upon us to believe that he can bring light out of this darkness, that he can bring good out of this evil. There has been blindness at various levels in the church, a moral blindness on the part of those priests who committed the crimes and an institutional blindness on the part of diocesan authorities in the way they responded. We need the gift of new sight; we all need the ability to see as the Lord sees. In asking to be healed of our blindness, we can have an expectant faith that the Lord will respond to our heartfelt prayer, because, in spite of our failures, the Lord remains faithful to us. He continues to bring the light of life to all who are humble enough to acknowledge their need of it.