A Blessed Time

“But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear.

Amen, 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.”

Matthew 13:16-17

We live in a very blessed time.  You might say I am crazy or you may ask me “Have you watched the news? Have you looked out your window? With all that is going on, how can you say we live in a blessed time?” The coronavirus. The riots. The racial injustice. The violent protests. The everyday evil committed by our people. Yes, those are all horrible things, but I still say we live in a very blessed time. We live in a blessed time not because we as humans, on our own, make it blessed, but because we have a God who has revealed Himself to us.  

We live in a blessed time because God was made man for us, because Jesus came, preached, suffered, died, rose from the dead, ascended into the heaven, and asked the Father to send the Holy Spirit to us. We live in a blessed time because of the gift of our faith, and because we know that any suffering we endure now is as St. Paul says, nothing when “compared with the glory to be revealed to us.”

We are blessed beyond all imagining because we see what “many prophets and righteous people longed to see but did not see it,” and we hear what they longed to hear but did not hear it. Because our Lord came to earth and left us the Eucharist we see what only the eyes of faith can see, and we hear His profession of love for us as He prayed and suffered on the Cross as well as His final words to us, that He will be with us always even “until the close of the age.” So, yes, we live in a very blessed time. May we count our blessings today and ask the Lord to open our hearts in gratitude!