I would like to focus my reflections today on the importance of being able to see spiritually, to see as God sees as God told the prophet Samuel. To see spiritually is important because we need to see the world beyond the appearance of the material. To see spiritually is important above all because our long-term goal in life is to see God who is pure spirit. The example of the process of gaining spiritual sight is given to us in today’s gospel in the story of the man born blind.

The Lord approaches the man through the senses the man has available in him for learning: his touching and hearing. The Lord touches his eyelids with the clay he has made and speaks the words commanding him to go and wash his eyes at a nearby pool. It is by the sound of the Lord’s voice that this man begins to learn about the Lord. The man will always remember the sound of the voice of the person who gave him sight. From this man’s healing we learn that gaining spiritual sight begins with hearing. If we want to have our sight fixed for the spiritual world, we need to begin with our spiritual hearing.

The man washes his eyes and gains his sight. He does not immediately see with those healed eyes the person who has healed him. He knows his name and has heard his voice. He thinks the Lord is a man from God, a prophet. When the Lord looks for him after the man is expelled from the synagogue, the man hears that voice again. What he hears from that voice is an invitation to make a profession of faith, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man’s answer in the form of a question is expected, “Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?”

What happens next is amazing. The faith that he initially started to have through his hearing, now receives its fullness helped again by his hearing in conjunction with his seeing. We can imagine how the man opens his eyes in amazement and delight when the Lord says to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” We may attain this spiritual fusion between hearing and seeing in the person of the Lord himself, who can be seen and heard even today. Today we hear his voice in the gospels, we see his presence in the holy Eucharist. The Lord touches us, touches our hearts to enable us, as the man born blind, to acknowledge and acclaim him as the Son of God.

Let us humbly ask the Lord to touch our hearts to hear and obey his words. Let us humbly ask the Lord to touch our eyes to receive the power of his grace to see the world as he sees it. Let us humbly ask the Lord to grant us the grace of seeing his glorious face in heaven.