Friday, First Week of Advent

In today’s gospel reading, ‘two blind men followed’ Jesus. They were blind, and, yet, they followed Jesus as he went on his way. Perhaps we might see ourselves in those two men. We too follow Jesus but, as we do so, we are in need of his healing power. We don’t always see as the Lord would want us to see, as the Lord himself sees. We don’t always see the many ways the Lord is present to us in our lives. We can fail to recognize him in others or even in ourselves. In the words of today’s psalm, we fail to see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living. There is evil and darkness in our world, but the Lord’s goodness is there too, in the goodness of others which can often go unnoticed. In the first reading from Isaiah the Lord declares that his people shall come to see what his hands have done in their midst. We don’t always notice what the Lord’s hands are doing in our midst, the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living. Advent is a season when we are invited to see more clearly the many ways that the Lord is constantly coming among us.  It is a time when we turn to the Lord in our blindness, like the two men in the gospel reading, and ask the Lord to help us to see the light of his presence, the light of his goodness, more clearly. The growing light of the Advent wreath reminds us that the Lord is among us as our light and our help, in the words of today’s responsorial psalm. As our light, he can enlighten the eyes of our hearts, in the words of Saint Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, so that we can recognize and rejoice in his daily coming to us.