Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The gospel for this 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time is a wonderful catechesis about the life of a Christian and what it means to be a disciple of Christ and experience the amazing gift of conversion. Notice that everything starts from Jesus who is walking as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a large crowd of people. And a blind man, named Bartimaeus, was begging for alms. I would like to tell you that this gospel can be best understood if we place ourselves in it. That means if you realize that the blind man is you and me.
The gospels are not to understand things but rather to see that this is our life. It is you and I who are at the roadside. I love his expression because being on ‘the roadside’ is not the same as being on ‘the road’. You are not ‘on the road’, neither are you off the road. You are there at the edge of the road, begging for alms, like so many of us. We are there asking or begging for affection, begging to be noticed, wanting to be loved, wanting to be at the center of attention, showing what we are capable of doing, and asking for alms.
To be at the edge of the road is neither on the road nor off the road. This happened a lot to us as St. Paul says. We want to do good, but we cannot. We want to be chaste, but we cannot. We want to be saints, but we cannot. We want to do good, but we wind up doing the evil that is in front of us. It reminds me of the scene when Jesus passes by on the shore of the sea of Galilee. He is not in the sea or on the land but on the shore. He passes by and sees that the disciples are in a crisis, a breakdown, which happens often, brethren. The Lord calls them and says to them, “Follow me.”
Today’s gospel is different since Jesus doesn’t call him directly but after the blind man cries out to him, screaming at the top of his lungs, ‘Jesus, son of David, have pity on me, have mercy and compassion on me.’ Jesus finally calls him over and the disciples approach him saying, “Take courage, get up, Jesus is calling you.” The Lord calls him in order to cure his blindness so that he can follow Jesus along the way.
The blind man listens very well to the preaching of Jesus. He listens to what Jesus is saying. He noticed that someone was passing by and asked who it was. They tell him it was Jesus of Nazareth. And then he began to cry out, ‘Jesus, son of David’, all the time listening. Faith can only come to us if we hear that Jesus is passing by. What does that mean that he is passing by? That he has the power to cure our blindness, our darkness. What is it that we do not see? We can’t see our sins. We don’t see the person next to us and therefore we cannot love him, nor do we see the love of God in our life. Many times, we see our own history as being poorly done and we cannot see, we do not see, God’s love in it. This means that we are blind. We are at the edge of the road and the Lord passes and calls us.
I love to see how the gospel says the blind man springs up and comes to Jesus. He jumped up, threw away his mantle, his only security, the only thing he had, and easily throws it away, leaves it. Then, without seeing he makes a big leap towards Jesus, towards life, towards the light. You need light in order to see. Jesus cures him so that he can see. Jesus heals him because Jesus is the light and also the way. How I love how the gospel ends. It says, he immediately received his sight and followed him on the way.
He is no longer on the side of the road; now he is on the road itself following Jesus. To follow Jesus is to follow the light, having the light we can continue to follow the light. How wonderful it is to be able to follow Jesus because if we were blind, we could not follow someone if we can’t see them. We need to see someone to follow him and in order to follow him to the cross. That is why I encourage you to see that this is what the Lord wants to do with all of us.
This gospel is terrific because the Lord wants to give us sight; he wants to make you see his love so that you can follow him. The Lord wants us to see him in all that we do every day, in all the things that you are living today so that we love. Let us ask the Lord this Sunday that he may grant us the power to love him and to see him in everything that happens to us, in all the ordinary activities of the day. If hope you believe that Christ has the power to take you out of your blindness, your darkness. I announce to you today that Jesus has this power, that he is passing by on the road. Shout to him, call out to him because he has the power to take you out of the darkness that you have entered. He has the power to give you eternal life in heaven and here on earth, to make you happy, to rebuild your marriage. He has the power to take you out of drugs, to help you with the problem you have with your son; he has the power to help you accept the sickness you have. He has the power to give you a holy death. May you experience this, brothers and sisters.
Go to your room, close your eyes and says this prayer a hundred times: Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me, help me. Say it over and over. One day the Lord will stop and you can tell him what you want him to do. That you want to see his love, you want to see that your history is perfect, you want to see the sufferings of the other. Lord, that I may see!