Readings:
Ecclesiasticus 42:15-26
Mark 10:46-52
Reflection
As the church enters back into her season of ordinary time, we are given in the readings an encapsulating awe-inspiring understanding of who Christ Jesus is.
Sirach, an Apocrypha Jewish text, and the Psalm remind us on a cosmic scale of the grandeur of the world made through ‘the words of the lord’ to which we know is Jesus Christ from John’s prologue (John 1:1). Jesus is the eternal ‘Word of God’ and it is him who all of creation is made through and for, as Paul reflects in the letter to Colossians (1:15-20). The divine cosmic stage is set, as the readings get us to try and grasp the majesty of the Man found in the gospels.
However, in stark contrast, the gospel is that of a simple encounter. Against a backdrop of a Lord who is ‘everlasting to everlasting’, all-knowing, all-seeing, Jesus asks the blind man of faith in such intimacy “what can I do for you?’.
Perhaps this the most awe-inspiring quality of God: the grand maker of universe, who holds everything in his being, desires intimate relationship with you and asks you, ‘what can I do for you today’. and so we can pray to be like the blind man, who leaps up and has sight restored to see the glory of God and “follow him along the road.”
Claire O’Donohue is a current Oxley Passionist Youth Retreat Team member. While also in her final year of university, she is completing her bachelor’s degree with a major in visual art and theology.