In 2013, I decided to participate in the Ignition exercises, also known as the 19th Annotation. Despite what it may seem, it had nothing to do with Pilates, Cross Fit or yoga. Instead, for thirty weeks, I was guided through a series of daily prayers and other spiritual exercises designed by St. Ignatius of Loyola to deepen participants' relationship with God. Alongside our group and individual work, each participant was assigned a prayer guide to help them process their experience. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay The prayer guides were generally composed of lay people and staff members from the Spiritual Renewal Center who had already participated in the exercises and were ready to participate again. part of the process. Now, because I was a priest and already a spiritual director by training, I was assigned to Sister Maurice May. Sister Maurice spent her entire adult life as a member of the Sisters of Saint-François. After years of teaching and leading Catholic schools in Maryland, she is now retired and living at the motherhouse in Syracuse. The sister had a reputation as a tough spiritual director. Unlike the lay staff members, the sister had a gift for focusing on the spiritual issues of the moment and then asking the difficult questions while looking at you as if she were looking straight into your heart. This is what made Sister Maurice so unique. . She could see things that no one else would ever notice, even if she was blind. Physically, all she could see with her "good eye" was light and shadow, but with both eyes, she could see deep into the heart and see exactly the things that the person being ruled did not want to see . This morning we heard the story of Jesus healing a blind man. Once again, the seers, the Pharisees and much of the crowd, who could literally see Jesus of Nazareth, were blind to the fact that He is the Son of God. The blind man, however, could not see Jesus, but had no problem seeing who Jesus is. What's even more fascinating about this particular story is that even after Jesus gives sight to the blind man, the Pharisees still refuse to believe in who Jesus is as they cower and complain about how whose Sabbath Jesus violated when he restored sight to the blind man. How many of us have found ourselves in the middle of a revelation, but when that revelation highlights something we would rather not see, we literally turn a blind eye to what may make us uncomfortable? This is what our Gospel addresses this morning and what Saint Paul also addresses in his letter to the Ephesians. When read in juxtaposition with this morning's Gospel, St. Paul changes the metaphor of blindness to that of light and darkness. Then he exalts us to be children of light. What Paul is asking us to do seems simple, we all like to live in light, at least during the summer when the days are long and the air warm. There is, however, a problem with not only living in the light, but being a child of the light. Light illuminates things, it helps us see more clearly the flaws in our lives and the evil that surrounds this world. As children of the light, Paul asks us to shed light on the darkness of the world, to reveal injustice, to call attention to the places where God is not. Sometimes we can feel good when we feel empowered to make changes and maybe.