Mk 8:22-26
22When [Jesus and his disciples] arrived at Bethsaida, [people] brought to [Jesus] a blind man and begged him to touch him. 23He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. Putting spittle on his eyes he laid his hands on him and asked, “Do you see anything?” 24Looking up he replied, “I see people looking like trees and walking.” 25Then he laid hands on his eyes a second time and he saw clearly; his sight was restored and he could see everything distinctly. 26Then he sent him home and said, “Do not even go into the village.”
He tookl the blind man by the hand: Jesus never rejects a person who comes or is brought to him. This should be good news for us all! Jesus will never reject us. But why do our prayers sometimes remain unanswered? Well, the blind man’s healing does not happen instantly. He has to be led out. He sees hazily at first. Jesus lays his hands on him a second time. And he is told not to go back to the village.
If we feel rejected and think we have waited long already, we cannot give up or we will remain blind. Let us look for people who will help us beg the Lord. Let us allow the Lord to take our hand, slowly open our eyes, and work on us little by little or step-by-step. And let us not forget to go home to the Lord.
We have been blinded and remained blind for so long. Seeing will be a slow and long process, or we will just be blinded by the light. Good things take time or go through a process.
Spittle: People in Jesus’ time believed that casting an “evil eye” or evil glances could actually damage another person. Stratagems for warding off the evil eye varied from hand gestures to spitting, to wearing protective color. The actions that Jesus performs—the putting of spittle on the blind man’s eyes and the laying on of hands—are typical of traditional healers. Jesus must overcome the “spell” of the evil eye cast upon the blind man. Though Jesus is not a traditional healer, he uses the ways understood by the people.