I’m sitting back after a full week of visiting with a friend from out- of-town, reflecting on really special event on Saturday evening, and musing on the Feast of the Annunciation at Blessed Is She, today. Here’s a little summary.
In the dark
Over the weekend I had the opportunity to offer a reflection on spiritual blindness at an event hosted by the Blind Cafe’. It was a vulnerable experience because I was completely off-script which is not my comfort zone. I’d also add that it’s an odd exchange when you receive a phone call during which the caller explains they’re looking for a person to speak to spiritual blindness and, Katie, you came to mind.
Feeling humbled and ill-equipped to speak on the topic of blindess, in the company of folks who are blind, I sought out the Easter readings. So, I called on the name of Providence to guide this conversation and my bumbling thoughts on how our limited sight can perhaps illuminate our spiritual vision.
I listened to the Easter readings with a new awareness of our shared and universal experiences of spiritual blindness—those times when our own parameters, or perhaps God’s timing actually prevent us from seeing what is directly before us.
- Mary Magdalene—So stricken with grief in the garden that she believes the Risen Christ to be the gardener until he speaks her name.
- The disciples didn’t trust their vision of the Risen Lord. They feared that they were seeing a ghost, until Jesus had eaten with them.
- On the road to Emmaus when the disciples meet Jesus, they are walking with him, but do not physically recognize him until the breaking of the bread. Only then do they remember: ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road?”
- The Gospel this weekend is the one of the ‘Doubting Thomas,’ in which Thomas cannot believe just his friends or his eyes, but instead must physically touch the wounds and scars that Christ suffered in order to believe. Jesus says to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen? Blessed are those who have not seen and believed.”
If there is something to be gleaned from these Easter readings, it might be that although we are accustomed to engaging the world with our sight, perhaps it is not how we best engage the Risen Christ.
Certainly my attention has been on these themes because of this event at the Blind Café, but I think this language from Luke’s Gospel calls us back in a particular way.
“Were not our hearts burning within us?!”
The Good News/The Easter message I am hearing this year is one that seems to be taken in with nearly all of the senses but sight (alone).
St. Paul instructs: ‘I pray that they eyes of your hearts may be opened.’
Let us make that our prayer, too.
May the eyes of our hearts be opened.