Healing
Bethsaida is situated northeast of Lake Tiberias, near Galilee's boundary. Of course all the people in that area had heard about that remarkable healer and a lot of them had even seen him in action. Jesus and His disciples were therefore already well known, and in fact the miracle described in this section of the Gospel was one of the last referring to Jesus' therapeutic activity. It was at the people's request that the blind man was brought before Jesus who was asked to “touch him.” That request indicates that the people were aware of Jesus' extraordinary pranotherapeutic power.
They did not, in fact, ask him to “lay His hands” on the man – a frequent request reported in the Gospel on the part of people who compared him to other healers of the time – but simply to “touch him” (the aorist used in the Greek text indicates that as far as they were concerned just touching him once would be enough).
It is the people who bring the blind man before Jesus the Therapist, it is the people who ask. The blind man does nothing: he does not ask, he does not seek, he does not push, he does not implore. It is the people who insist. Maybe they wanted to see a miracle, maybe they wanted to see something that no one else was capable of doing. Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village, away from the crowd waiting for a show, put spittle in his eyes and laid his hands on him. But the blind man is not completely healed, a person cannot receive what they do not desire. You cannot receive a gift that you are not ready to receive. The blind man is ready to see the people walking a short distance away from them, but he was not ready to see the face of the Lord, his God standing in front of him. Jesus lays his hands on him again and this time he heals not only the blind man's eyes, but also his wishes, his soul, his thinking mind, and his interior gaze. Now the blind man is healed and is able see, in fact he is able to see clearly, the text tells us, the person who is standing in front of him. Now he understands that the person who is standing in front of him is the one he has always had inside of him. Now he is indeed healed.