Today’s first reading describes a double siege to Jerusalem: God himself and his enemies encamped around the city. However, God is not there to destroy Israel, but to save it. The miracle of salvation is a real resurrection: the unproductive forest will be transformed into an orchard, the blind will be able to read the Scroll (the Word of God) and the deaf will be able to hear the words there written.

The poor and humble will be the new humanity where tyrants, violent persons, scorners, men and women ready to do evil will no longer exist. The new humanity will live in fear and praise of God. Is it just a dream that will never come true? Maybe. But “I have a dream” (Martin Luther King), we have a dream, God has a dream. We must continue to dream of a new transformed humanity: we will be collaborators of our God.

When? Soon, from now on, now. This is the theme of Advent: there is a promise of a sudden, miraculous transformation that will take place shortly, indeed it is coming, indeed it is already here. We must know how to wait, we must prepare the way for the Lord who comes, in prayer and vigilance.

Being saved – but from what? From who?

Being changed, being transformed: but to what point are we so wrecked that we need to be changed? And what will we be like after the transformation promised by God?

Today’s Gospel could help us to answer even only partially to these two questions.

Matthew Chapter 9 tells of many healings carried out by Jesus Chapter and ends with Jesus’ pity towards the crowds. We know the words: “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest”. (Mt 9:37b-38) that introduce the chapter 10, that one of the mission.

The message of the context could be this: following Jesus means accepting to be healed while we are sent to place the signs of liberation of the Kingdom within humanity. We have no power, but we can heal while we are healed.

One of the most important healings concerns our eyes, our often sick gaze on Jesus and his message.

The two blind men addressed Jesus as “Son of David”. This name could generate ambiguity and misunderstandings because it had political connotations. The first true miracle associated with regaining sight is to view Jesus correctly. Jesus struggled to make his friends understand that his choice of life was different from what everyone expected. He was really “Son of David” but first of all he was the Son of the Father, the Servant of God comes to fulfill the will of his Father, come to save humanity giving up his life.

First of all, it is necessary to be aware of being blind (it is not easy). It is also necessary to have the strength to cry out to Jesus: “Pity me” (it is not easy) and to have the courage to enter his house. Finally, Jesus asks us: “Do you believe that I can do this”? Asking to be healed is an act of awareness, freedom, and trust in Christ. St. Jerome, in his sixth letter, speaking about the responsible of some disorders in the community, recommended: “to be assiduous in praying before the Crucified by asking that He may open the eyes of their blindness”. I would add: let us also pray that the Lord may take away our blindness.

So my dear sisters, my dear brother, look within yourself and see what you really need, prepare the way for the One who comes. We are blind because we delude ourselves that we are followers of Jesus because we are doing something we have been taught.

The Master Jesus does not need soldiers who announce and fight for the Son of David, but women and men who learn to resemble the Son of the Father, men, and women who live and bear witness to the Gospel message and not to ideologies or moralisms, men and women of faith, hope and charity, men and women who dream of a better world and who try to realize it with Christ.

If the announcement was another, different from that one of the Gospel, then “See that no one knows about this”. It is better to be silent if, through our word and our way to live a Christian life, we are creating false images of Jesus and of the Kingdom of God.

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