Recovery of Sight
My common practice as I head up into the hills on my morning hike is to listen to a Jesuit prayer app called, “Pray-As-You-Go.” This morning was no different, and the voice coming through my earpiece from my phone invited me to enter this time of prayer by listening through an imaginative lens to the gospel passage about Jesus healing a blind beggar (Luke 18:35–43). The speaker asked me to imagine myself in the scene as a member of the crowd or as the blind beggar himself. It took less than a second for me to situate myself in the place of the blind man, the person crying out for healing, for restoration. My memory immediately went back to a week earlier when, on this same trail, I had cried out to God asking for help and healing in one particular area of my life, acknowledging my powerlessness and begging for Divine intervention. I understood feeling blind, in the dark, unable to see my way forward.
As I lingered over the words of this story, it became a metaphor for the way my spiritual journey has taken a turn over the past few years. I pictured myself without the sense of sight but hearing the crowd’s commotion, not understanding exactly what people were saying, but knowing that something was happening. I heard myself asking what was going on and heard the reply that Jesus was near. This evoked a deep cry of desperation for the mercy of this holy man. Those familiar with the story realize that people in the crowd rebuked the blind man for calling for help. I, too, have heard those voices, both internal and external, that have rebuked me for calling out to the Divine in new ways, understanding the Presence in new ways, making noise about my blindness and need. What I hadn’t noticed before in the passage is that Jesus “commanded him to be brought to him.” Jesus didn’t walk over to the man or command the man to find his own way to Jesus. Someone had to help this blind man get to Jesus. I wondered, “Who are the people helping me to Jesus?”
I had the opportunity to recently attend via Zoom a conference on “The Future of Christian Spirituality” sponsored by the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas, in honor of Fr. Ronald Rolheiser. The last speaker, Robert Ellsberg, began his talk with a story from an episode of The West Wing.
A guy was walking along and fell into a hole and couldn’t get out. A doctor passed by, and the guy yelled loudly for help. The doctor wrote a prescription and threw it into the hole. A priest walked by, and the guy yelled loudly for help. The priest wrote a prayer and threw it into the hole. Finally, a friend walked by, and the guy once again yelled loudly for help. The friend jumped into the hole. The guy screamed at him, “Are you stupid? Now we are both in the hole.” The friend replied, “Don’t worry. I’ve been here before, and I know the way out.”
Ellsberg ended his talk about the future of Christian spirituality by referring back to this story. He reminded us that there are saints, mystics, and teachers who have been in the hole and know the way out. They are guides to help us in our desperation, in our darkness. They will lead us into the future of Christian spirituality, both personally and communally. They are the ones who are bringing me to Jesus.
There might always be the naysayers, the ones who dispute the validity of the questions, the pleas of the heart, but there are also the ones who are ready and available to show the way out of the empty, dark places and to help me “recover my sight,” recover my true self. There are those like St. Augustine, John of the Cross, Thérèse de Lisieux, Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Thomas Merton, Meister Eckhart, Henri Nouwen, Richard Rohr, Ronald Rolheiser, and many others who are helping me into the Presence. As I recover my sight, like the blind man in that gospel story, I am following Jesus and glorifying God.
