{"id":4320,"date":"2017-01-24T19:30:09","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T19:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/?p=4320"},"modified":"2017-01-24T19:30:09","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T19:30:09","slug":"taking-time-to-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/taking-time-to-see\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking Time to See"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"light\"<\/a><\/h5>\n
April 3, 2011<\/h5>\n

John 9:1-41<\/h3>\n

It takes time to be able to see.\u00a0 Blindness does not let go of us all at once.\u00a0 It takes patience and repeated efforts to open ourselves to the light.\u00a0 This is the major theme of today\u2019s gospel.\u00a0 In the first few verses of the gospel a man who has been blind from birth is healed by Jesus.\u00a0 But the major point of the gospel is that although this man has received physical sight, he still cannot see.\u00a0 Although he now for the first time he can recognize color and movement and people\u2019s faces, he is not yet able to recognize who it is that healed him and how his healing leads to salvation.<\/p>\n

This is why the major part of the gospel happens after the healing.\u00a0 As this man who was once blind interacts with other people, he gradually begins to see what has happened to him.\u00a0 He talks first to his neighbors, then to the Pharisees, then to Jesus himself.\u00a0 Step by step he sees more and more.\u00a0 At first he does not know who it is that healed him.\u00a0 Then he recognizes Jesus as a prophet. Finally he comes to worship Jesus as his Lord.\u00a0 Step by step, the man who once only has physical sight comes to see Jesus as his Savior.\u00a0 Now of course, anywhere along in this process, the man born blind could have stopped.\u00a0 He could have said what I see right now is enough.\u00a0 I need to see nothing more.\u00a0 If he would have stopped, his life would have been simpler and certainly less combative.\u00a0 But if he would have stopped the process, he would always remain partially blind, never able to open himself fully to the light.<\/p>\n

The message of the gospel is rather clear.\u00a0 We can see, yet in each one of us there still remains a certain blindness. That blindness is something that Jesus wants to remove. He wants to take it from us, so that we can fully embrace the light.\u00a0 The only question is whether we will open ourselves to accept the light or stubbornly cling to the partial light that we already have.<\/p>\n

How do we open ourselves to the fullness of the light?\u00a0 The man born blind shows us the way.\u00a0 His witness tells us that we open ourselves to the light through dialogue. The man born blind keeps talking.\u00a0 He keeps talking to his neighbors, to the Pharisees, to Jesus himself.\u00a0 It is not easy to keep talking.\u00a0 You have to be open and admit that you do not know everything. Only then is there reason to dialogue.\u00a0 You have to have courage to realize that you might face some opposition with people who disagree with you.\u00a0 But the man born blind does not quit. He keeps in dialogue until he fully comes to the light.<\/p>\n

You might be experiencing some difficulty in your marriage or in some close relationship.\u00a0 From where you stand and what you see at this moment, you might conclude that the relationship has come to a dead end, that there are irreconcilable differences and no way forward.\u00a0 This gospel reminds you that there may well be a blindness in you that you have not yet recognized and encourages you to keep talking.\u00a0 Keep talking to your partner, to your friends, to counselors so that you might recognize what you do not see and allow Christ to bring you to a fuller sight. Perhaps, then, your relationship may be preserved.<\/p>\n

You might know someone who has hurt you deeply, and from what you can see right now, you have concluded there is no way I can forgive.\u00a0 There is no way this relationship can be healed.\u00a0 Today\u2019s gospel tells you that there are things about yourself and about the other that you still do not know.\u00a0 Keep the dialogue going.\u00a0 Keep trying to understand what you do not understand, so that Christ might lead you to a fuller light and perhaps reconciliation.<\/p>\n

There might be someone in your family, in your workplace, in our government with whom you disagree, whom you feel is wrong.\u00a0 From where you stand right now, there is no way that you could understand such people or support them.\u00a0 Today\u2019s gospel reminds us that along with the things that we see, there remains a certain amount of blindness.\u00a0 It is only as we keep discussing, keep thinking, keep talking that we are able to recognize that blindness and then perhaps move forward.<\/p>\n

There is nothing wrong with being partially blind until you make the decision to make that blindness permanent.\u00a0 That is why Christ calls us out of blindness into the light.\u00a0 Christ asks us to keep talking, to keep dialoguing so that we might recognize what we do not know and be able to see more fully.\u00a0 As long as we keep talking, we will be able to understand and see more and more.\u00a0 It is when we close the dialogue and close our minds, that we condemn ourselves to blindness.<\/p>\n

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It takes time to be able to see. Blindness does not let go of us all at once. It takes patience and repeated efforts to open ourselves to the light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5879,"featured_media":4321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/files\/2017\/03\/light.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4320"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5879"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}