Mt 13:16-17
[or Mt 13:31-35]
16“Blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. 17Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”
BLESSED ARE YOUR EYES: The beatitude pronounced by Jesus is related to his speaking “in parables.” The parable as used by Jesus is defined by C.H. Dodd as “a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt of its precise application to tease it into active thought.” A parable penetrates one’s heart and mind only as one is prepared to receive it. To those who close their hearts to Jesus, his stories or comparisons remain “riddles,” puzzles. But Jesus’ parable reveals the truth to those who are open to it. And as they act on this truth, more revelation is given to them.
The believers are privileged to see and hear what was not granted to the many prophets and righteous people of old. It is because the one who tells the parable is the One who brings the fullness of God’s salvation which the righteous people—even the whole of humanity—looked forward to from the beginning. They could only look from a distance, like Abraham who looked forward to the day of Jesus. Now he rejoices to see it (Jn 8:56).
The Gospel is chosen for the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne, parents of Mary and grandparents of Jesus. They are righteous people who longed for the Savior; in them and in their daughter Mary, the hopes and dreams of centuries are about to meet, because Jesus the Savior is soon to be born from their lineage.