When one looks at the miracles of Jesus, it is interesting to see that so many of them are connected to opening up or otherwise healing someone’s eyes, ears, or tongue. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that these miracles, of course, always have more than a physical significance. Eyes are opened to see more deeply and spiritually; ears are opened to hear things more compassionately; and tongues are loosened to praise God more freely and speak words of reconciliation and love to each other. Thomas Merton describes a revelation he had one day while standing on the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville: “I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all of those people, that they were mine, and I, theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness. Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin, desire, nor self-knowledge can reach the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only we could all see each other that way all the time! There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed.” This is a world in which we hear, see, and speak from the depth of our great soul of oneness with God in which I become a different person altogether; those moments when I am overwhelmed by compassion when everyone is brother or sister to me when I want to give of myself without concern of cost when I can carry the tensions of life without a breakdown in my virtue when I would willingly die for others, and when my arms and my heart would want nothing other than to embrace the whole world and everyone in it.