If you cross Queens Boulevard and head down 112th Street, you’ll pass a Reform temple, the Temple Sinai, a modern building with a small plaque by the front door. The plaque commemorates a piece of Forest Hills history: on that site once stood the home of one of the most celebrated women in America: Helen Keller. She lived in Forest Hills in the 1920s and shared a house there with her teacher, Annie Sullivan, and Annie’s husband.

Most of us know about Helen Keller from the play or movie, “The Miracle Worker,” which told the story of how a child who was deaf, blind and mute came to connect with the world through her teacher, and learned to communicate from a well of water in her backyard.

It remains a beautiful story of isolation — and connection. In today’s gospel, we encounter another story of isolation and connection, and meet the original Miracle Worker –who gave the blessing of sight to a man born blind. It is also a story of devotion and love – Christ’s compassion for an outcast. In this episode from John’s gospel, the God who created man from the clay of the ground uses that same clay to give him a new life. Christ’s touch reveals to him the world. And out of the grit and mud, he receives clarity, and vision.

He is given light.

In His first act of creation, from Genesis, God said, “let there be light.” And here, in this gospel, God — in effect — says it again. He creates for this man light. He offers him the gift of seeing. The gift of belief. Of hope.

One of the things that’s unusual about this miracle is that it doesn’t end when the healing is complete. Usually, Jesus heals someone, and that person disappears and is never heard from again. But not this time. Here, there is more to the story. There are scenes with the blind man’s parents, and the Pharisees. And, in an unusual twist, Jesus has a second encounter with man he healed.

What this says to us is that the healing touch of Christ isn’t the end of the story – for the man in the gospel, or for the rest of us. Christ’s relationship with us continues past that first transformative encounter. He seeks us out, in our confusion and bewilderment, and guides us, gently, to understanding. “One thing I know,” the healed man says, “is that I was blind and now I see.”

In the words of the great hymn, he has experienced Amazing Grace.

It is a grace all of us yearn for – and that our RCIA candidates, joining us at this mass, will experience in a special way when they are fully initiated into the faith at Easter. They will know light as never before.

In the glow of the resurrection, at that beautiful moment, the Exultet reminds us, “darkness vanishes forever.”

But before that celebration, these days of Lent ask us to pray about the shadows haunting our own lives. The gray areas of sin. The clouded corners in our hearts.

And so we pray that God will whisper the great words that sparked creation, and ignited the universe: “Let there be light.”

In the hearts of those of us who are alienated, or angry…let there be light.

In the lives of those who are seeking God, and seeking Christ…let there be light.

In those who feel desperate or depressed…because of a lost job, or a foreclosed home, or a heart that is heavy with anxiety…let there be light.

In the way we treat those around us…our friends, our neighbors, even our enemies…let there be light.

There are many kinds of blindness – spiritual and physical.

And so we pray to God, very simply, to open our eyes.

Helen Keller was never able to see or hear. But she learned to communicate with the world, to make connections and associations that showed the power of the human imagination. She became a witness to the possibilities of even a limited life.

In our own limitations, we pray that we, too, may be given the grace to live in possibility – and that Christ the Miracle Worker will continue to work miracles in each of us.