The sight that changes the life

 

Today's gospel is very rich. Each word in the gospel contains deep spiritual secrets.

Let us begin with the city Jericho where the incident takes place. As soon as we hear the name Jericho comes to our mind the great city walls of Jericho which was the obstacle for the Israelites to get into the promised land. And we know how they conquered it - through prayer and act of a liturgical procession.

So, Jericho stands for a city of sin. A city standing a thwart the purpose of God. And so, we might say Jericho stands for the culture that poisons the mind and the heart. It stands for the culture that produces spiritual blindness. The inability to see the deepest truth of things. In our increasingly secularized society, Secularism is a kind of blindness. The secular eyes see the world in all different dimensions. But they don't see the depth dimension. The dimension of the first cause - the spiritual and the transcendental dimension. So, it's a kind of spiritual blindness produced by a culture. So blind Bartimaeus sitting by the walls of Jericho in some ways, that's a lot of people today. He's a symbol of all of us. Sunk in a blindness caused by the world and culture that we inhabit.

Now his first great virtue is that he begs. He hears about Jesus who is passing by. He begins to shout and to beg Jesus of Nazareth, Son of David, have pity on me. Bartimaeus knows that he's blind and furthermore knows there's nothing he can do to solve his own problem. This is very important in the spiritual life – to realize our own helplessness in the face of our sin. That is what we do in the beginning of every holy mass.

Like Bartimaeus we say Lord, have pity on me. The words used in the original text is “Kyrie Eleison”. Those Greek words are used even today in the liturgy irrespective of languages. Why? Because by using the same word that Bartimaeus used, we go back to 2000 years ago in time and we imitate Bartimaeus in all respect, with the same spirit with the same language we beg Him.

It is interesting to note how he begs: “Son of David have mercy on me”. The word “Son of David” is an another word for the “Messiah”. So, he is actually professing that Jesus is Messiah. The depth of this man's faith amazes us. Because the man who had never ever seen Jesus heard about Jesus from someone and he believed in Him. So, this man really embarrasses us who have eyes and ears, who have seen thousands of testimonies of Christians and who have seen the great testimony of the existence of His Church for more than two thousand years. It reminds us of the fact that “faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.” (Rom 10:17)

So, announce Christ becomes our duty too. You know, it was not any Apostles who brought Christianity to Rome, the heart of the universal church. No, but a lady, Priscila. It was from her that faith was passed on to others. Nowhere in the Bible it is written that she ran and preached. It is to be assumed that Christ was spoken of through ordinary speech in her day today life. As we celebrate Mission Sunday, it is our duty to talk about Christ in the ordinary life.

Now consider what happened when Bartimaeus confessed his faith. The crowd scolded him, telling him to be quiet. Yes, when we turn to Christ, the world will turn against us. Especially in this hyper-secularized age of ours, when we turn to Christ, do not think for a moment that most people will support or appreciate us. The most astonishing thing is that the same crowd calls Jesus when he says to call him. A hypocritical society that go with Christ but refuses to draw anyone to Him. In fact, this crowd should scare us. Whether am I in it or not is a fact that needs to be introspected.

But above all hypocrisy, Bartimaeus kept shouting. Yes. The second virtue of Bartimaeus is his perseverance. Perseverance in prayer is something the Bible repeats many times. St. Augustine says: “if God immediately answered all of our prayers, we wouldn't be ready to receive. What he wants to give it's as though the heart has to be expanded. So, it can take in what god wants to give.” And some of that expansion is caused by waiting. Bartimaeus keeps at it. And now Jesus calls him, calls the blind and marginalised man. The word used for call is kaleo. it is from this root word comes ekklein, means to call out from which comes Ecclesia Church. So church is a community of people who have been called out by Jesus out of the ways of this world. So every Mass is a repetition of this gospel. Each of us stands in the place of Bartholomew. Our social status or weaknesses are not the norm there. On the contrary, what is required is the faith that Jesus is the Saviour who can save me and the courage to express it.

That is why the Apostle Paul says: “you are saved through faith” (Eph:2:8). So, to be in the church and to go for mass means not to reject the call of Jesus who can ultimately save us.

It is interesting to note Bartimaeus response to Jesus' call. It is said that he jumped up and came to Jesus. We read that the baby in Elizabeth's womb leaped for joy. Yes, these are leaps and bounds that occur only when filled with the Spirit. If there is no joy in being told to come to the Divine Sacrifice, then this gospel must be heard over and over again.

Then Jesus asked him. What do you want me to do for you? It is not that Jesus did not know his need. But to understand his attitude. We saw a similar question last week. When the disciples James and John, who had been with Christ there for 3 years, were asked, they asked Jesus to sit on the left and right when it comes to glory - authority and honour. But Bartimaeus who meet Jesus for the first time, he asks about his mercy and healing.

Healing is not only for his blindness but also for the wounds inflicted on the heart, degradations and ridicule he received as a blind man. So he asks for a new life. He is a beggar. He could ask for, if he wanted, wealth and a comfortable life. But he only asked for the grace of God that transforms lives. This is a lesson for us. Very often when we pray, we pray only for temporary changes rather than grace that changes our lives. So let us imitate him and pray for the light of faith that we alone can see with the angels beyond wealth, earthly possessions and honours. Yes the view of faith. That is the light of faith.

In the encyclical “Lumen fidei” The Light of the Faith half of which is written by Pope Benedict XVI and completed by Pope Francis. as it says beautifully in it.

There is an urgent need, then, to see once again that faith is a light, for once the flame of faith dies out, all other lights begin to dim. The light of faith is unique, since it is capable of illuminating every aspect of human existence. A light this powerful cannot come from ourselves but from a more primordial source: in a word, it must come from God. Faith is born of an encounter with the living God who calls us and reveals his love, a love which precedes us and upon which we can lean for security and for building our lives. Transformed by this love, we gain fresh vision, new eyes to see; we realize that it contains a great promise of fulfilment, and that a vision of the future opens up before us. 

Dear friends, I think we can all see ourselves in the blind Bartimaeus. We are like blind beggars. We are blind to the light of faith and often starving for the truth of the gospel and so like blind Bartimaeus we need to ask the Lord for the light of faith, not just be given to us but to be given to our families, given to those we love., to be given to everyone in the world who still walks in the darkness of not knowing who Jesus is as the Son of David, who is come into the world to have mercy on us.

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