10 minutes wih Jesus are group of Catholic priests who share friendship with Jesus, plus keenness to help young people of all ages to learn the art of loving Jesus and speaking to Him. You can find them in WhatsApp, Spotify, Ivoox, Telegram, Goggle Podcasts and Apple Podcast. Every saturday, we are going to share one meditation by 10 minutes with Jesus. Enjoy it.
My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence, I beg your pardon for my sins, and the grace to make this time or prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my Father and Lord, my guardian angel intercede for me.
Lord Jesus
Today Lord Jesus, we accompany you as you enter into Jericho, that town and you’re entering in surrounded by a lot of people, and as you go into the town, there is a blind man, sitting alongside the road, and he hears the noise, the commotion, and he inquired what this meant. They told him Jesus of Nazareth is passing by, and he cried, “Jesus son of David, have mercy on me,” and those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent, but he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me,” and Jesus stopped. We look at Jesus, we look at you Lord, as you stop, infinitely interested in this man full of compassion, enthusiastic, love, and mercy. Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him, and when he came near he asked him, ”what do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me receive my sight,” and Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight, your faith has made you well” and immediately he received his sight and followed him glorifying God; And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.
Blind man
What was it like for this blind man, who we know was called Bartimaeus, sitting there day after day, begging, just hanging on to life, and not seeing anything of the beauty of color, or variety of I suppose the vividness of just life, and of nature, and of people, and then through his in insistence, through his prayer, and he’s fairly stubborn, he shouts over the people who tell him to shut up, the Lord looks after him so well. It must have been a complete transformation of his life, and we can well understand that, having received his sight, he followed Jesus, he joined that group of disciples, he joined the crowd, and he glorified God, and not only that, but all the people when they saw it, gave glory to God.
Well, this prayer Lord, that I may see Lord, that I may receive my sight in fairness, I think it’s also a prayer for all of us, we really do need at times to see more clearly, and because we don’t realize a lot of the time, how good God is, and I suppose how beautiful our life in Christ actually is, doesn’t it happen, you sometimes, that it happens me, that life just seems a bit of drudgery, you know, I’ve got this job, and that job, and every day is a bit the same, and there’s always problems, and can’t get away from duties, and that’s why we tend sometimes, towards escapism and so on, and rather than escapism, maybe what we need to do is actually delve into reality much more, and realize its beauty, its depth, its wonder, and the grandeur of ordinary life, the immense grace in the ordinary, that everyday things, actually, are full of the love of God, and can be even more full of our love for God, and our love for others.
If
If we keep the vision before our minds, it’s not easy we are creatures who ultimately are made for the vision of God, I mean, heaven is the beatific vision, and we will see God, we hope, when we go to heaven, and the holy souls in purgatory for whom we pray, especially during these weeks of november, they don’t yet see God, yet they’re full of joy, and knowing that they will eventually see him, in fact even now though, we’re called to see the grandeur and the wonder of God, even now like Saint John says, in his first epistle he says to us see what love the Father has for us, that we should be called children of God, and so we are, you and I, we’re not just called children of God, we actually are children of God, but sometimes we don’t see the grandeur of being a beloved daughter or son of God, we just don’t see it, why is that?
Well, because sin, original sin, and our own sins have clouded our vision somewhat, we don’t actually see the wood for the trees, and also sometimes we’re just plain tired, or we’re fed up, or we’re locked into maybe a routine view of reality and we don’t see the beauty of our vocation, the beauty of God’s love for us. So I suppose first and foremost the main thing to do, is to ask for this, to ask for the grace in order to see God’s love for us in the ordinary, to see the extraordinary grandeur in the ordinary hum drum, and that your life, and maybe think of your life now, maybe you’re a student, maybe you’re a factory worker, maybe you’re a farmer, maybe you’re a parent and whatever we’re doing, me as a priest, to see the grandeur of the ordinary, to realize that. I suppose as Jordan Medley Hopkins says, ”the world is charged with the grandeur of God,” so we ask, this is our petition, Lord may I see, may I see, and this is a grace undoubtedly to ask for, it’s a grace to ask for.
Remember
I remember a few years ago, being on a youth camp with young lads, and in the summertime, and one of the games the young fellas played, was a ridiculous game, really, but they had great fun doing it, and it was called cone football, and basically what it was, was a plastic sheet, was placed on the ground in a very unlevel piece of the field, so it was kind of sloping, and then on top of that plastic sheet, water was was poured onto it, and washing up liquid, so it was really, really slippy, and the guys were playing football, the young lads in their bare feet, and not only that, but they wore a cone around their face, so in front of their eyes they were looking through a cone, and the broad part of the cone was covering their face, and what they could see was only whatever they could see through the narrow part of the cone, at the end, so their view of their opponent and of the panorama was extremely limited, and of course it made for very good sport because everyone was slipping all over the place, and enjoying the fun.
Now, it’s only an image, but sometimes we’re kind of playing cone football in our lives, we’re not actually seeing the wood for the trees, we’re not actually seeing the great panorama, I mean how how wonderful it is to be a daughter or a son of God, how amazing it is to be a participant in God’s own life by grace, you know, we don’t fully realize this, we don’t see it a lot of the time, and Lord, I’d like to see it, I’d like to see it and I know that if I ask you like this blind man Bartimaeus, if I ask you for the grace of seeing that a little bit more, I know you’re going to show it to me, we might remember that famous Christian hymn, in fact I imagine is the most famous Christian hymn, called Amazing Grace, composed by a man called John Newton, who was a poet, and eventually an anglican clergyman as well, who was involved in the slave trade, and he died in 1807.
1748
He experienced an extremely dangerous and frightening storm of the coast of County Donegal in Ireland, in 1748, and that was the beginning of his religious conversion, eventually he gave up slave trading and became an abolitionist, and of course, that phrase Amazing Grace is also the name of the film of 2006, the one you know, about the efforts of Wilberforce, William Wilberforce, to stamp out the slave trade at a parliamentary level in England, and well in that hymn, you may remember there’s a few lines that it says, ”I once was lost, but now I see, sorry but now I’m found, I was blind but now I see” in other words, he got the grace, Newton got the grace to see, to see the love of God for him, to see also what was wrong about what he was doing, and to change his life now.
Hopefully, we won’t need, all of us anyway, we probably won’t have a dramatic experience of a storm, in the middle of the atlantic, in order to wake ourselves up, it’ll probably be a more gentle thing, but let’s ask the Lord for that, like the blind man, Lord, may I see, may I see, we ask the Holy Spirit ”help me to see the greatness of the ordinary,” we turn to our lady.
Dante in his epic poem, and the divine comedy, in the section where the traveler is just about to enter heaven, and he’s about to see God, he’s about to see Christ face to face, the guide who is guiding the traveler says, ”Now to that face which most resembles Christ’s, lift up your face, its power alone can make you look on Christ, to that face which most resembles Christ look, and that’s the face of Mary” and that’s where we finish our prayer.
It´s the end
I thank you my God for the good resolutions, affections and inspirations which you have communicated to me in this time of prayer. I ask your assistance in putting them into effect. My immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph my father and my Lord, my guardian Angel, intercede for me.
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God Bless You!
