Jesus is hard at work healing the mute, the deaf, and the blind. Yet in today’s gospel we see once more that the true mutes are the Pharisees, both deaf and blind from the spiritual realm. Ironically, the Pharisees, leaders in the community, cannot see the power of God working through Jesus. Their own learning has blinded them from seeing an obvious manifestation of God’s power in their midst and they dismiss it as something evil.
Even today many of our leaders are blinded by personal ambition, popular opinion, and corrupt intentions. The true laborers, the women and men for others, come from those who are humble enough to see their need for healing and are willing to surrender to the love of Jesus.
Jesus wants nothing more than to enter into our lives to guide us in our vocation as laborers for the Kingdom. How might I be able to trust in his heart of love? How might trusting this love propel me to reach the many needy in our city, neighborhood or even right in my own home?
—Matthew Lieser, S.J. is a Jesuit scholastic studying philosophy at Loyola University Chicago.