Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of Mark (8: 22-26) in which, when Jesus came to Bethsaida, some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him.

Fr Paul says the positioning in the Gospel which explains this restoration of sight is really symbolic: it is placed immediately before Peter is granted the clarity to see who Jesus is. The order of events in the Gospel is not necessarily the order in which they occurred, for Mark gathers incidents together for his own purpose of teaching.

The process described may also be symbolic, for the grant of sight occurs in two stages: the man sees first indistinctly and then he sees clearly. Just so, Peter will declare his faith in Jesus as the Messiah, but he still does not understand what this means. The cure of another blind man, Bartimaeus of Jericho, will be needed before the full meaning of what it is to be Messiah is revealed in the Passion and Resurrection.

This cure is the only one in the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Luke and Mark where Jesus uses physical means. He does the same sort of thing for the blind man in John 9: 6. This is a precious detail: Jesus was fully human, and this sort of physical contact was valuable in showing the bodily importance of Jesus’ humanity.

Fr Paul invites us to consider today’s Gospel Lesson – How clearly do I see Jesus??