Open My Eyes, Lord, That I May See
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We begin Week 4 of our Sunday Lenten Challenge with this opening prayer:
Trust And Believe
Lord,
I believe you want to give me the grace to go deeper in prayer this Lent. Help me to be present to you so that I’ll intimately pray these next 15 minutes with my heart fully open and willing to receive that grace. Please help me open my heart and pray with more intensity. I want to be able to visualize myself with you so I can feel your presence more intimately in my life this Lent. Lord, give me the grace I need as I strive to complete these 6 days of Sunday Lenten meditations. I am choosing to take up my cross and humbly follow you all the way to Calvary and I want to do it with my whole heart.
AMEN.
Lord, Open My Eyes to See
Let’s contemplate the promises of God this Lent. What does it mean to be able to see? How does Christ open our eyes? Let’s meditate on these things in the presence of Christ and offer ourselves to Him in prayer.
Prayer to the Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit,
I believe you are truly here and present to me right now. I desire to be present to you.
Thank you for giving me the ability to see the things of God; I am grateful for the graces you give. Help me see what you are showing me and give me the grace to follow your prompting.
You are faithful to me even when I am not. Please help me see the truth about myself so that I might be truly humble. Help me remember the price Jesus has paid for my soul.
I am grateful to you for helping me see how much you love me and for all the ways you answer my prayer with graces I don’t expect or deserve.
Breathe on me as I spend these next 15 minutes fixated on today’s Mass readings. Holy Spirit, help me pray with humility, honesty, love and affection. I want to grow in virtue and holiness.
Thank you, Holy Spirit, for every consolation, desolation, time of silence, difficult trial, and temptation of the evil one. I understand that you love me and that everything in my life happens by God’s holy will, whether it be divine providence or God’s permissive will due to my sin and negligence.
Please humble me as I walk with Jesus toward Jerusalem. Help me see the things of God in my everyday life so that I can be more present to you and receptive to grace.
AMEN.
Say Nothing Just Take Him In
Spend 1-3 minutes in silence gazing at the Lord with love and gratitude, in a prayer of silent contemplation.
Make a Movie in Your Mind
Now we will contemplate the first reading. You’re standing in the hill country near Bethlehem, sheep bleating somewhere just out of sight, dust rising from a well-worn path. Samuel has come to Jesse’s house, and something is clearly wrong — the old prophet’s face is tense, searching. One by one, Jesse’s sons are brought before him: tall, strong, exactly what a king should look like. Samuel shakes his head each time. You watch his frustration grow, until finally someone remembers the youngest son, still out with the flock, and is sent running to fetch him…
Do Not Judge with Your Eyes
1 Sam 16:1b,6-7,10-13a
Fill your horn with oil, and be on your way. I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem, for from among his sons I have decided on a king. As they came, he looked at Eliab and thought, “Surely the anointed is here before the LORD.”
But the LORD said to Samuel: Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, because I have rejected him. God does not see as a mortal, who sees the appearance. The LORD looks into the heart. In the same way Jesse presented seven sons before Samuel, but Samuel said to Jesse, “The LORD has not chosen any one of these.”
Then Samuel asked Jesse, “Are these all the sons you have?”
Jesse replied, “There is still the youngest, but he is tending the sheep.”
Samuel said to Jesse, “Send for him; we will not sit down to eat until he arrives here.”
Jesse had the young man brought to them. He was ruddy, a youth with beautiful eyes, and good looking. The LORD said: There—anoint him, for this is the one! Then Samuel, with the horn of oil in hand, anointed him in the midst of his brothers, and from that day on, the spirit of the LORD rushed upon David.
Sometimes we think we know something based on what we can see, yet we miss the most important thing. We have two ways of seeing. We have our physical eyes, and we have spiritual ones too.
In what way was Samuel seeing with his spiritual eyes in this passage we read? Why did he choose David when no one else would have?
Have you ever experienced something similar in your own life? When has God given you the grace to see with spiritual eyes when everyone else around you could only see with their material eyes?
Have you ever missed the mark?
Be Completely Real
Right now in your life, where are you at? Are you more inclined to see with your physical eyes, or are you attuned to the Lord’s will in the way that Samuel was?
Spend a few moments in dialogue with the Lord. Be sure to take time in silence so that He can help you see things.
Let us continue our mental prayer with today’s Gospel:
Visualize Christ
The dust here is different — city dust, packed hard by generations of sandaled feet, somewhere along a narrow Jerusalem street. A man sits against a wall where he’s sat every day of his life, a beggar’s bowl in front of him, his eyes clouded and unseeing since birth. You watch Jesus kneel in the dirt, work spit and dust together into a thick clay paste with his own fingers, and press it gently over the man’s closed eyes. Then he tells him to go — down through the winding streets, down toward the Pool of Siloam, where the water still runs cold and clear from the tunnel cut through solid rock generations ago…
Having Eyes to See
John 9:1-41
As he passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him. We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on his eyes, and said to him, “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam”
(which means Sent). So he went and washed, and came back able to see. His neighbors and those who had seen him earlier as a beggar said, “Isn’t this the one who used to sit and beg?”
Some said, “It is,” but others said, “No, he just looks like him.”
He said, “I am.”
So they said to him, “how were your eyes opened?”
He replied, “The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went there and washed and was able to see.”
And they said to him, “Where is he?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
They brought the one who was once blind to the Pharisees. Now Jesus had made clay and opened his eyes on a sabbath. So then the Pharisees also asked him how he was able to see. He said to them, “He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see.”
So some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, because he does not keep the sabbath.” Others said, “How can a sinful man do such signs?” And there was a division among them. So they said to the blind man again, “What do you have to say about him, since he opened your eyes?”
He said, “He is a prophet.”
Now the Jews did not believe that he had been blind and gained his sight until they summoned the parents of the one who had gained his sight. They asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How does he now see?”
His parents answered and said, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. We do not know how he sees now, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him, he is of age; he can speak for himself.”
His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone acknowledged him as the Messiah, he would be expelled from the synagogue. For this reason his parents said, “He is of age; question him.”
So a second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give God the praise! We know that this man is a sinner.”
He replied, “If he is a sinner, I do not know. One thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see.”
So they said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”
He answered them, “I told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?”
They ridiculed him and said, “You are that man’s disciple; we are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but we do not know where this one is from.”
The man answered and said to them, “This is what is so amazing, that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if one is devout and does his will, he listens to him. It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he would not be able to do anything.”
They answered and said to him, “You were born totally in sin, and are you trying to teach us?”
Then they threw him out. When Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, he found him and said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
He answered and said, “Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?”
Jesus said to him, “You have seen him and the one speaking with you is he.”
He said, “I do believe, Lord,” and he worshiped him.
Then Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.”
Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?”
Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.”
This man born blind had no fear of consequences. He was not afraid to proclaim the truth, but yet his own parents— who had always had their sight—were afraid to acknowledge the truth for fear of getting expelled from the synagogue.
Do you see how Jesus not only restored this man’s physical eyesight, but also his spiritual eyes as well?
Paul’s language mirrors the Gospel almost exactly: “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” The blind man’s physical healing becomes, in Paul’s hands, a picture of every soul once blind to God, now called to “live as children of light.”
And the irony, Jesus plainly says: “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.”
Are You Listening?
Can you see areas in your life where fear has blinded you? Have you been praying for the grace to see with spiritual eyes?
The man who was healed was thrown out of the synagogue after he gave his testimony to the Pharisees. And when he encountered Jesus, he believed.
Paul reminds us that this kind of sight isn’t something we produce ourselves: “Live as children of light, for light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth” (Ephesians 5:8-9). The same light that opened this man’s eyes has already been given to you — not to make you comfortable, but to make you visible, the way his healing made him visible to everyone who once overlooked him at the roadside.
Take some time to encounter Jesus in that place of blindness that fills you with fear. Bring him into your darkness and share with him your greatest fears. Tell him you trust him even though you can’t see what will happen next. Tell him you do believe in him, and ask him to give you eyes to see what he wants you to see.
Jesus, thank you for opening my eyes to see you, even when I was afraid of what I might have to give up in order to truly see. Give me the courage this man had to speak the truth, even at the cost of what people think of me.
AMEN.