'I want to see!' (Second Scrutiny homily)

A lot of blind people in the readings today.
In the first reading, nobody sees anything special
in the youngest son,
Not even the Prophet Samuel!

In the Gospel, lots of people think they can see.

But what do they see?
A man born blind; a man who must be a sinner!
Someone of no importance.

Of course, the blindest one of all isn’t the blind man.
He sees better than most.

No, the blindest ones are those who say they see just fine.

Do you think you see?
Are you sure?

There’s so much goodness we fail to see in each other.
Rather, we tend to see what annoys or offends us.
We fail to see—or we forget to look for—
people of no importance, standing by the road, begging.

Whole parts of the world are like that:
Africa, North Korea, Haiti.
We can’t fix all the problems,
but if we start by learning more about them,
we might find we can do more than we first thought.

And there are people in our community!
Poor, unimportant, begging for help.
It’s easy to feel bad for them—and then move on.
What’s hard is to care genuinely.
At least, this is an attitude I am guilty of.

If we admit we are blind,
The Lord will help us see.

It’s a little distasteful the way he did.
that the Lord used saliva and dust.
Sometimes, the Lord offers to heal us,
but we don’t like how he’s going to do it.

He says, “go to confession,” but we say,
“Nah, I don’t want to do that!”
He says, “go apologize”—but we are too proud.

If we want to be healed badly enough,
We’ll want it any way we can get it!

This coming Tuesday evening, at 7 pm,
We will have our Penance Service at St. Boniface.
This is a great opportunity to be given the gifts of spiritual sight—
to restore our sight if we’ve lost it.

We only need ask:
“Lord: I want to see!”