Master
of the Gathering of the Manna, Healing of the blind man of Jericho,
oil on
canvas, St. Catherine's Convent Museum, Utrecht (the Netherlands)
...
In
the Gospel today, we hear about Jesus healing this blind man named
Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus is a really
interesting and powerful character in the Gospel, and he is struggling with
blindness. But Bartimaeus is also a beggar, and this is probably a fairly
overlooked point.. Spiritually speaking, we’re all beggars –we can’t fix any
of our spiritual problems and we all depend on God. So in this story, we’re meant to identify with Bartimaeus,
who like us, is a beggar. When Bartimaeus is calling out to Jesus for help, he
says, “Son of David, have pity on me!”
In Greek, that’s “eleison me, eleison me!” Actually, at the beginning of
Mass, we say the same thing: “Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie
eleison.” Essentially, it could be
translated, “Lord, have pity on me.
Christ, have pity on me.
Lord, have pity on me,” – just like the blind man! At the beginning of
every Mass, we’re putting our lives into context. We’re putting ourselves ritually in the position of Bartimaeus
in that we realize that we are beggars and we need help. Actually, that’s the virtue of
Bartimaeus in the Gospel – he knows that he’s a beggar, and that he can’t fix
his own problems, and so he calls out to Christ to save him. I’m sure that there
are a lot of people here who have found themselves in the same situation. There
are people who find themselves overwhelmed with the family situation, or health
issues, or financial stuff, or the overall situation of the world today. There are people who are overwhelmed
with some attachment to sin that they can’t seem to be rid of. And what does that feel like? That’s right, complete powerlessness. No matter how hard you try, you can’t
fix this. You can’t do it on your
own power. You are a beggar like
Bartimaeus, and the only thing you can do in these troubling and desperate
situations is call out to God. When Bartimaeus is called he throws off his
cape. But… wait a second…he’s blind. If this whole Jesus thing doesn’t work out, how’s he going to find it
again? That’s pretty much all his
security and protection against rain, cold, or whatever. It’s pretty much everything he has. He
abandons himself to God in order to run to him. That is what faith is: abandonment
to God. Faith is leaving behind all the things that we want to keep ourselves
self-sufficient, leaving behind all the things we want to control but can’t. So
as we come near to the Lord in the Eucharist today, we recognize that we are
beggars totally dependent on the mercy of God to make us whole. May we rise then, leaving our
powerlessness behind, and give ourselves to his loving care • AE
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