Lesson from Fr. Paulus | Lesson: Valuing God's Better Gifts

My dear brothers and sisters. Jesus gave this blind man two priceless gifts. First, Jesus gave him the joy of physical sight. For the first time in his life, he could see. All the things that he had known just by words, sound, and touch suddenly came alive.

Color flooded his mind and filled him with wonder; the visual symphony of the sky and the landscape; the subtle beauty of expressions on people's faces emphasizing the meanings of their words; the look of love and tenderness from his mother, which he had never seen.

Jesus had opened to this man a new, glorious, awe-inspiring world of human experience. Joy, amazement, and gratitude filled the man's mind and heart. He experienced a hitherto undreamed-of intensity of life.

But Jesus also gave him the gift of spiritual sight - the gift of faith. He enabled the blind man to recognize and see God in Jesus. He enabled him to encounter his Creator knowingly, face to face.

And the man was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude and awe - so much so that he fell down at Christ's feet and worshipped him, right there in the middle of the crowded Temple.

Which gift did the man value more? His actions give us the answer.

He stood up to the powerful Pharisees, defending Christ's lordship, even at the risk of being expelled from the synagogue - making him into a social outcast. This man did not let the gifts of God blind him to the goodness of God.

We have also received two priceless gifts from God: our natural lives, with all that that entails, and our supernatural life, our knowledge of, faith in, and friendship with Christ. Which do we value more?

The Sacred Heart Is Not Indifferent to Our Love

Sometimes it is hard for us to admit that we don't follow Christ as closely as we should. But we really need to be humble. Only the truth will set us free to live an abundant life. When we prefer the lesser gifts to the greater gifts, putting our faith in second place, it pains Christ and wounds our souls.

Jesus made this especially clear in his famous revelations to St Margaret Mary Alacoque, a French nun who furthered the devotion to the Sacred Heart in the 1600s.

While she was in prayer, our Lord appeared to her, with his five wounds shining like five brilliant suns and his Sacred Heart burning like a furnace of fire. He told her how much he loves every single man, woman, and child, and how deeply he feels the ingratitude they show him by rejecting or belittling his friendship.

He appeared to her two more times. On the last time, he showed his heart on a throne of flames, wrapped tightly with a crown of thorns, and topped with a cross. He told her, "Behold this heart that has loved men so much that it has spared nothing to testify to them its love. And in return I receive from most of them only ingratitude by their irreverence and their sacrileges and by the coldness and contempt they have for me in the sacrament of love."

He then explained to her that he was speaking not only of great criminals and violent sinners, but most especially of those who claimed to be his followers but who had fallen into routine and empty ritualism.

It sounds harsh, but it is only because his love is so deep that our ingratitude is so painful to him. His love, his friendship, our faith, the sacraments - these are the gifts we should value most.

How to Grow in Our Faith

It's hard for us to keep our priorities straight. The pleasures of our natural life can be so vivid that we let them upstage our supernatural life.

We want to be popular, so we join in with the gossiping or the vulgar, locker-room talk. We want to be successful, so we condone the dishonesty and deception being used by everyone else to climb the ladder. We want to enjoy ourselves, so we make excuses when our conscience reminds us that there is more to life than just having a good time.

All of us here today are making an effort to follow Christ, to keep our priorities right, and yet, we still have our falls and failures. Only by strengthening our faith can we really progress on this path of authentic Christianity. We can do two things to strengthen our faith.

First, we can ask God to strengthen it for us. Just as the blind man asked Jesus to show him the Messiah, so that he could believe in him, we can ask God to show us more clearly his presence, truth, and love. How could he ever deny such a request?

Second, we can boldly defend our faith. When the blind man was interrogated, he bore witness to Christ. The more they tried to intimidate him, the more courageously he bore witness. Through that process, the eyes of his soul were gradually opened until he recognized in Jesus not just a man of God, not just a prophet, but the Messiah himself.

This week, God will give each one of us a chance to boldly bear witness to him. Let's make up our minds now to act courageously and faithfully then, so that our lives and the lives of others can be filled more and more with the saving light of faith.