Wednesday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time
“May the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ enlighten the eyes of our hearts, that we may know what is the hope that belongs to his call” (Ephesians 1:17-18). That verse forms our Alleluia today. What an awesome prayer! Let’s enter into it together, asking God to heal any blindness that keeps us from being hopeful, and trusting in God’s covenant promises that inspire our hope.
As we begin our reflection, I invite you to pray our Alleluia using Lectio Divina. If you’re not familiar with how to pray this way, you’ll find a helpful description here. “May the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ enlighten the eyes of our hearts, that we may know what is the hope that belongs to his call.” What might God want to reveal to you in this scripture?
St Paul asks our Heavenly Father to enlighten the eyes of our hearts, that we may know hope. To have hope in God through Christ is to trust deeply that God is faithful to God’s covenant promises. To hope is to believe that God’s Word is true, not just for others, but true for me and for you. To hope is to have confidence in God’s plans and purposes, knowing that God will never leave us or abandon us. To hope is to wait upon the Lord with patience and humility, seeking God’s will over our own. To hope is to maintain our assurance that God is good, kind, loving, generous, merciful, just, and gracious toward us always and at all times. To hope is to await the fulfillment of salvation when Christ returns to claim his Bride. Hope is akin to expectancy – we can expect that God is at work in our lives, seeking to draw us more deeply to himself. It’s not always easy to maintain hope. What are the things in your life that blind you to hope?
In our Gospel, Jesus heals a blind man. St Mark tells us, “he saw clearly; his sight was restored and he could see everything distinctly.” What needs to be restored in you so that you can see clearly and distinctly the hope that is yours in Christ? What blinders might you ask God to remove so that your vision of faith is restored? The author of the Letter to the Hebrews invites us to “fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of faith” (Heb. 12:2). When we fix our eyes on anything other than Jesus, we lose our way. We lose hope in God when we place our hope in other things and become distracted. As you seek to live a happy and secure life, what things are competing with God for your trust and confidence – in what have you placed a false hope? Name those and turn them over to God today. We can also lose hope when we fix our eyes on negativity – the bad news in the media, the evil that plagues our world, the brokenness around us, even our own sin. Any and all of that can lead to despair, which robs us of our hope. Let’s not fix our eyes on those things; let’s maintain our gaze fixed on Jesus.
The first reading relates God’s Covenant with Noah. God promises, “Never again will I doom the earth because of man . . . nor will I ever again strike down all living beings, as I have done. As long as the earth lasts, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, Summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” We have hope because of God’s covenant faithfulness. Confident in God’s Covenant with Noah, we can have hope for our lives! We know with absolute certainty that summer will transition to winter and day will give way to night – we have no doubt about that, we hope in those predictable patterns in our world because God has ordained them. Similarly, we know with absolute certainty that all God’s Covenant promises are true and trustworthy and that gives us hope!
And so we pray, “May the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ enlighten the eyes of our hearts, that we may know what is the hope that belongs to his call.” Amen and amen!
-Elizabeth Wells