There are none so blind as those who just refuse to see

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

It was one of those Sundays that the Catholic Church describes as Ordinary Time; one of the days they don’t mark down with a major event or festival or feast day, but which are entitled to some sort of recognition and respect all the same.

And the Gospel was from St Mark; the story of a blind man the road out of Jericho as Jesus began his journey to Jerusalem.

The Gospel was about faith – the faith of a blind man who believed that Jesus could make him see again – but it triggered me to think of something else.

Because about four weeks earlier, I’d been in that self-same city of Jericho and ironically, we’d driven there from Jerusalem – so we were making a reverse version of that final journey for Jesus, only not by donkey but in a rather more comfortable air-conditioned van.

But all of that still gave me a different interest in the Gospel proceedings than before – because we may not have walked in the footsteps of Jesus but I knew the territory he was travelling through.

These days Jericho and East Jerusalem are part of the West Bank, that part of Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territory that is predominantly home to Palestinians who live largely under the thump of the Israelis.

When it comes to this part of the world, there are no simple explanations or generalisations – and yet I’ll forever remember Jericho for one of the worst examples of man’s inhumanity to man.

Of course, there have been greater atrocities and genocides – there still are in parts of Africa where this is happening – and there will be in the future, but this was a case of human beings seeing other humans as a lesser form of life.

And it happened on the outskirts of Jericho, possibly around the spot where Jesus encountered the blind beggar in the Gospel of St Mark.

Whether or which, we were in a place called Khan al-Ahmer, a Godforsaken piece of stony ground to one side of a six-lane motorway between the two cities.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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