Sunday, April 3 : Saint Gregory the Great

If anyone recognizes the darkness of his blindness… let him cry with his whole mind, let him say: “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” But let us hear what happened when the blind man was crying out: “And the people ahead rebuked him, that he should be silent” (Lk 18,39). What is meant by ‘the people ahead’ as Jesus comes if not the crowds of bodily desires and the uproar caused by our vices? Before Jesus comes into our hearts they disturb our thoughts by tempting us, and they thoroughly muddle the words in our hearts as we pray. We often wish to be converted to the Lord when we have committed some wrong. When we try to pray earnestly against the wrongs we have committed, images of our sins come into our hearts. They obscure our inner vision, they disturb our minds and overwhelm the sound of our petition… But let us hear what the blind man, still unenlightened, did. “But he cried out all the more: ‘Son of David, have mercy on me’”… In proportion to the tumult of our unspiritual thoughts must be our eagerness to persist in prayer… It is surely necessary that the more harshly our heart’s voice is repressed, the more firmly it must persist to overcome the uproar of forbidden thoughts and break in on our Lord’s gracious ears by its intrepid perseverance. I believe that everyone observes what I am saying in himself, and herself. When we turn our minds from this world to God, when we are converted to the work of prayer, what we once enjoyed doing we later endure in our prayer as demanding and burdensome. Holy desire only with difficulty banishes the recollection of them from our hearts… But when we persist ardently in our prayer, we fix Jesus to our hearts as he passes by. Hence: “But Jesus stopped and ordered him to be brought to him” (v.40).
maronite readings – rosary,team