18 November 2019
Monday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Jesus’ miracle of healing produces a truly marvelous effect: “all the people gave praise to God” (Lk. 18:43). It is marvelous not only because they all witnessed a miracle. To praise God after seeing a miracle is fairly reasonable. It is marvelous because the all witnessed a miracle they tried to stop. Tried repeatedly, in fact. Every person in the crowd wanted to keep the blind man from getting to Jesus. Yet Jesus did not try and hide this marvel from them.
This is the depth of God’s mercy towards us: that He shows us glory even when we do not deserve it, even when we try and prevent it. We in our own lives are surely guilty of doing what this crowd has done. Yet God is determined to let us see this glory, in spite of our best efforts. We never deserve to see God’s glory to begin with, but even less so when we try and stifle that glory. Even so, God loves us enough to make sure we see what we tried to stifle, that we may know Him more and love Him more. For this, we must marvel.