With eyes that are spiritually blind I come to You,
O Christ; and like the man who was blind since birth I cry out to You with repentance: “You are a Shining Light to those who are in darkness”.

The Church adeptly ends our forty-days of celebrating the Resurrection of Our Lord by remembering, on the very last weekend, the cure of the man born blind and the clairvoyant girl who exclaimed: These men are servants of the Most High God: they will make known to you a way of salvation.” It is my hope that all of my readers will immediately put together a message from the combination of these two stories that will help them to more effectively live their daily lives.

I would encourage all who are reading this to stop, before completing this article, and reflect upon the message they have derived from combing these two stories. I truly believe that you can find a message by combining these stories.

Now that you have thought about it, I would share the message I received.

First, I think that the combination of these two stories tells me about life. We are all born blind to the true and real meaning of life. The journey of earthly life is, I believe, about learning the true meaning of human life. The man’s   blindness tells me that life presents to all of us certain challenges and we learn about life’s meaning by meeting these challenges in a positive manner. I also truly believe that when we see life’s challenges in a negative way, we never learn the lesson that life is designed to teach us.

The passage from the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistle, tells us that, if we truly believe our God became Incarnate as a human person in order to reveal how to live this earthly life, we will learn the lessons that life is designed to teach us. This requires us, however, to ask ourselves two very important questions: (1) What are the particular challenges that my life is delivering, or has delivered, to me? and (2) What are they trying to teach me about the meaning and purpose of life and how to live life? I truly believe that we must remember that God allows life to deliver the unique challenges which can, if we respond to them in a positive way, change our attitudes and behaviors so that we can live more like Jesus – life is meant to help us not be blind to life’s lessons!

Hopefully you will ask yourself these questions!