As Jesus was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a sizable crowd.
But Timaeus,
A blind man,
The son of Timaeus,
Sat by the roadside begging.
On hearing that was Jesus of Nazareth,
He began to cry out and say,
Jesus,
Son of David,
Have pity on me.
And many rebuked him,
Telling him to be silent.
But he kept calling out all the more,
Son of David,
Have pity on me.
Jesus stopped and said,
Call him.
So they called the blind man,
Saying to him,
Take courage,
Get up.
Jesus is calling you.
He threw aside his cloak,
Sprang up,
And came to Jesus.
Jesus said to him in reply,
What do you want me to do for you?
The blind man replied to him,
Master,
I want to see.
Jesus told him,
Go your way.
Your faith has saved you.
Immediately,
He received his sight and followed him on the way.
The word of the Lord.
Take courage.
Jesus is calling you.
Isn't it so beautiful to hear those words?
I think oftentimes in our daily life,
We become despondent,
Especially in the past year or two.
And it's become so easy to not feel the presence of God,
To feel the presence of God.
Maybe we've become blinded in our own right to the love of God.
And here we see a blind man putting all his trust in this teacher from almost a year ago.
From almost a heretic point of view,
This blind man who loudly proclaims and begs the Lord to heal him.
And then there was beautiful,
Beautiful words.
Call him to me.
Bring him.
I think in this reading,
There are so many lessons that we can learn and take from it.
We can see that even in the darkness,
Even in our own blindness,
God can hear us.
And if we have faith,
We will be healed.
Now that healing is something that's also very,
Very interesting because how many of us haven't asked God to listen,
To hear our prayer,
And then maybe we don't get what we ask for.
And that's a big thing that is thrown against any religion,
Any type of spirituality where people say,
Yes,
But if your God is so powerful,
Why is there still hunger in the world?
Why is there disease?
Because why not just pray it away?
And if you believe it,
You'll be cured.
To me,
The difference comes in that when we pray,
The pray should not necessarily be driven by our ego,
Be driven by what we want.
And Jesus said to us the perfect example when he said,
Not my will,
But thine will be done.
And that is where the power of prayer links with the power of the universe.
You know,
We are all here to learn specific lessons.
We are all here to rediscover God inside of us.
And sometimes that means that we need to go through challenging times.
It means that we need to die.
We need to die in any case that is part of our human experience.
So shying away from death,
I don't think is necessarily something that is healthy for us.
In the practice where I work,
I get to,
I am blessed to meet people sometimes in the last stages of their lives and working with them and traveling with them on the journey of facing mortality,
Facing the fact that we are all going to die.
And such a wake up call to God is a great example.
And such a wake up call and daily,
I thank God for being able to work in this industry where we embrace death for what it is.
It is change.
And while we do that,
We try and live because it is not up to us to say that you are going to die from a specific disease.
We put our faith in God that whatever will happen is the will of God.
We hope for life.
We hope for a life that is pain free.
And we try and offer the body through the medicines that we do exactly that,
The opportunity to heal.
We are not the healers.
All we do is create the right circumstances for God to do the healing for the Holy Spirit inside of us to take whatever we feed it to then grow and bring that healing.
So in the instance of the blind man,
He was blessed to be given back his sight.
And in the same vein,
Those who struggle to speak,
Those who struggle to breathe can get breathe back,
Can get their voices back,
Those who struggle to hear and find the hearing.
But it isn't always in the way that we expect it to be.
Sometimes we have to go through these challenges because that is the will of God.
I see it as if we are all playing this beautiful symphony of life.
And each of us is an instrument.
Saint Francis,
The prayer of Saint Francis is quite apt here when he says that,
Make me an instrument of thy peace.
So we are all here to play in this heavenly or earthly symphony,
If we were to call it that.
And sometimes we step out of tune.
That is when we sin,
That is when we break from our harmony.
But we must also be very much aware that the symphony sometimes plays some sad parts.
Sometimes the music of the symphony is very tumultuous.
And that is okay because that is part of our human experience.
Because that is part of our human experience.
When we go through our challenges and we ask for healing and we ask for God to be with us,
Maybe let's start with the words,
Thine will be done.
And if we do that,
We see that whatever happens to us has purpose.
It might not feel so,
It might not seem so at that very moment,
But the music carries on the vibrations,
These frequencies of godliness inside of us tells the story of all experience.
So as we go into this week,
I would like for you to just take a moment and become aware that at any given moment in time,
The spirit resides in you.
And that spirit is connected to every single person because the spirit is inside each of us.
And as we go into this week,
Recognize the call of God and take courage.
Amen.
Thank you for joining us in the presence of the Spirit today.
If you would like to find out more about the wide-robed months of Saint Benedict,
Please visit us at wrmosb.
Co.
Za.
Until we meet again,
God bless.
