One day, as Jesus was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great multitude of followers, a blind man called Bartimaeus was sitting there by the wayside. He was there begging. Being blind from birth, begging was for him the only means of survival.

All of a sudden, however, the blind man's destiny turned upside down. Jesus, accompanied by his disciples and a group of curious followers, happened to be passing by. The poor man was indeed blind, but fortunately for him he was not deaf! And in fact, the Gospel tells us, 'hearing' that Jesus was passing by, he started crying out: "Jesus, son of David, have pity on me!" His prayer was promptly answered: "Your faith has healed you!" Jesus told him.

Who can imagine the joy of that poor man when, thanks to Jesus, he opened his eyes for the first time in his entire life and the first thing his eyes were able to see was nothing else but the face of Jesus!

Physical blindness is indeed a bad thing. A blind man is deprived of the ability to see all the beautiful things around him, to admire the glory of nature, and above all to gaze on the face of his loved ones. Worse still, however, is spiritual blindness, the inability to see God with the eyes of faith and to understand God's infinite love for each one of us, whether we are good or bad, whether we are ready to capture His loving messages and to see Him in all our fellow human beings.

If we do turn to ourselves in the spirit of faith, we would surely recognise our own selves in Bartimaeus and discover that we ourselves are truly bind, indeed not materially, but spiritually. Our lack of faith often makes us incapable of seeing God in everyone and in everything, around us as well as within us. It makes us spiritually blind.

One of the prayers suggested by St Ignatius Loyola in his book of Spiritual Exercises is in fact this: "Lord, that I may see! That I may discover not only how much you love me, but also how much I have failed to love you! That I may discover at all times what your divine will is in my regard, but also how often I have been spiritually kind and failed to be sensitive to your divine will. Teach me to see you in all creation, especially in every human being created in your image and likeness including, those who are suffering or poor, and not excluding those who are deaf to your presence in every person and indeed in everything."

Today's Gospel invites us to address our own prayer to Jesus while he is spiritually passing along in every circumstance of our life, especially when we should feel cut off from reality because of the many hurdles we have so often failed to jump along the path that leads to victory and inner joy. All of us have indeed our blind spots. They are harmful to us and jeopardise our happiness precisely because we are unable to see them.

And because spiritual blindness, not unlike the physical one, can be an incurable affliction, we may have to ask the Lord for His help. A simple and beautiful prayer we can borrow from the blind man of Jericho, a prayer which may become for us a lifeline to an improved and more effective life for ourselves, is this: "Lord, that I may see! Enable me to see you and to know your holy will always, everywhere and in every thing, in spite of the many blind spots which may still be preventing me from seeing you more clearly, from loving you more dearly, and from following you more nearly!"

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