Deacon Tom's Homily for Sunday, March 19th

WE’RE ALL BORN BLIND. . . IN a spiritual sense. It’s through our Baptism that we begin to see who Jesus is.

IN TODAY’S GOSPEL, JESUS, THE One Sent by the Father, sends the man-born-blind to wash his eyes in the Pool of Siloam, which means “the one sent.” The young man does as he’s instructed and returns able to see

SOMETHING wonderful happens to the blind man’s physical eyes. Something even more beautiful happens to his inner, spiritual eyes. He begins to see Jesus as God’s light sent to him.

AS HE LOOKS into Jesus’ eyes, he sees the deep calm and peace there. He sees the holiness, closeness to God, His tenderness and, I suspect, a touch of humor.

WHILE THE LEARNED LEADERS OF the Synagogue are sliding deeper and deeper into blindness, the insight of the man-born-blind concerning Jesus keeps getting clearer and clearer: from his referring to Him as “the man called Jesus”, to calling Him a prophet from God, and finally to seeing Him as the heavenly Son of Man.

IN THE SAME WAY, WE TOO NEED TO grow in our awareness of who Jesus is. Every week when we come to Mass, our eyes are opened more and more.

THE WORD OF GOD WE HEAR proclaimed enables us to see Jesus’ deep-seated goodness, His compassion and warmth. We are freed a little more from our blindness. And we are transformed!

TODAY, GOD MAKES US MORE THAN we were when we walked into this Church!

THEN IT’S OUR TURN: WE ARE SENT out to tell our broken world what we’ve seen.

EACH WEEK OUR COMMITMENT becomes stronger and stronger as we bow before Jesus, God’s light sent to us, and we say to Him, “I do believe, Lord, I do believe.”