There comes a time when we need our own little miracle from God. The story of the healing of the two blind men in Matthew 9.27-35 is a gift from God for us today. When we allow God’s mercy and grace to work in our lives to open our eyes to our shortcomings. It is too easy to walk through life with our comfortable blinders, but once He opens our eyes, then our relationships can be healed. Ask God for mercy and He will open your eyes. Then you can be blessed to see clearly and be healed.

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My brothers and sisters, in this morning’s gospel we hear of a couple of miracles from Christ. The first is we see two blind men coming to Christ and they ask for his help and he says, “Do you believe that I can heal you?” “Yes, Lord. We know. We believe.” He says, “Your faith has made you well. Go.” And it says here in the gospel that Christ says to them, “See that no one knows it.” But when they had departed, they spread the news about him in all of that country. They were incapable of remaining silent from the grace and the gift they had received from God.

The other day I was having a conversation with a young man and he shared with me his entire life story. Some of you have had these conversations with me before if we’re sitting down and we’re talking about maybe a wedding or a baptism, I like to ask people tell me everything you want me to know about you. And I’ll be honest, sometimes the conversation is three minutes long. But this other day, this young man genuinely gave me his life story. And I was very grateful. I said, “Thank you for trusting me enough to share your story with me.” He says, “You’re welcome. But I have something else to say,” he said to me. He says, “There are some things that have rubbed me the wrong way.” “Continue.” And he shared with me how there were a couple of times where he was very hurt by what I had said to him and to his family.

I’m not going to give you the details of his life or the conversation, but in the context of this morning’s gospel, my brothers and sisters, up until that very moment, I was blind. And I believe that through that young man, God opened my eyes. You and I both know that I have a reputation for being a very strict priest. Some even call me too legalistic. I know that about myself, but God opened my eyes the other day to know that many times the words that come out of my mouth I know are not heard with the same love that I intend them to be. And I was very grateful this young man had the trust in me to share with me that story. And I believe that not only that God opened my eyes, but that in that moment with that young man, our relationship grew.

But I want to apologize to you because I know that I am not always heard with the same love that I try to speak, but I believe that God opened my eyes. And just as the blind men in the gospel shared the grace they had received from God, I want to share with you that grace that I received. Because all of us, if we allow God, need to have our eyes opened. We go through life with our own set of blinders, the circumstances of our life. What happened earlier in that day or the night before, maybe we didn’t sleep so good, maybe this, maybe that. All of us, if we’re open to God’s grace, all of us would benefit from the miracle of opening our eyes because it’s much easier to go through life blind. We can figure out how to avoid bumping into things.

This young man could very easily have just avoided the conversation altogether with me. I would have been none the wiser. I would have remained in my blindness thinking that we had something that we didn’t. All of us can experience that grace from God at some level or another. So my brothers and sisters, as summer is coming to an end, as the blind did in this morning as gospel, ask God for mercy and he will open our eyes. Like the case that I experienced, we may not always like what we see, but when we see it and only until we can see it, can we be healed. Only when God allows us to see like he wants us to see can we experience true healing from the pain and the struggles of life that surround us so we can go through tomorrow as the blind did glorifying God to all of the neighborhood, sharing the great things that God has done for us. But it begins with God opening our eyes. Glory to God for all things.