Several commentators use the word “intimate” to describe the incident in Mark’s gospel of Jesus healing the blind man. There’s a lot of physical touching involved. Jesus takes the blind man’s hand to lead him out of the village. Jesus puts saliva on the man’s eyes, then once again grips his hands. Finally, Jesus lays his fingers on the blind man’s eyes.

The scene conveys the gradual intertwining of two persons, Jesus coming to the man and then after a while the man warming to Jesus.

And don’t most of us believers recognize that same storyline and progression: coming closer to the Lord Jesus and at the same time His becoming more intimate with us.

Think back to childhood when from first being taught about Jesus you could conjure up an image or a feeling about Him — the all-powerful Savior, the one whom you were told was both God and human, then the one whom you took into your own self receiving the Eucharist. But who, because he was the all-powerful God, also came across as distant and even scary, visualizing him sitting there on his heavenly throne judging whether you could enter his Kingdom.

As the years rolled by, you began to feel more at home with him. He was someone you could talk to, someone who, because he was very human, had a feeling for how life was for you, for what you were going through. Perhaps you began to know him as a friend, a good friend, someone on your side who was pulling for you and very much in your corner.

On the other hand, there might have been times he seemed distant because his behavior, attitudes, and way of coming at life felt at such a remove from how you were living out your own days and nights.

The point is to call to mind the progression in your relationship with Jesus, the changing temperature in your feelings and thoughts about him.  These are the insights you gained over the years and the closer connections you began to build.

That’s you and me as this blindman in the story. And Jesus moving closer to us as we sense his hands and his self and person inching further into the patterns of our everyday lives, taking up a deeper place inside our minds and hearts.

This story of the blind man is a story of being taken further and further into the personal space of Jesus, a tale of gradually being let in on how it is he sees things and how he reacts to life around him. Couldn’t the outlines of this incident be something to recognize in ourselves. That is, the ways in which you’ve sensed The Lord drawing closer to you, and in turn your own coming nearer to him. These are the ways in which his view of life has become clearer to you, the ways in which his teachings have come to make more sense, the ways in which his loving the neighbor has become more appealing.

It’s helpful to put ourselves inside these Gospel events and there experience something of what the people in them came to know when they interacted with Jesus the Christ, our Brother and our God.

In a prayer for enlightenment, doesn’t Louise herself identify with that blindman: O Eternal Light, lift my blindness! O Perfect Unity, create in me simplicity of being! (Spiritual Writings of Louise de Marillac, p. 818 [A26: Reasons for giving oneselg to God in order to receive the Holy Spirit]).