OT XXX [B] Jer 31:7-9; Heb 5:1-6; Mk 10:46-52 (L/21)

Today’s Gospel explains how Jesus showed the mercy and compassion of his Heavenly Father by healing Bartimaeus, a blind man. Just as the blind and the lame were God’s concern in the first reading, Jesus was concerned with the blind beggar, Bartimaeus of Jericho. Opening the eyes of the blind was prophesied as one of the works of the Messiah: “The eyes of the blind will see” (Is 29:18; see also 32:3). In fact, in the very next scene he is being proclaimed by the crowds as Messiah.

Jesus and his team are approaching Jerusalem where the story will reach its climax with his death and resurrection. In Jerusalem all eyes will be fixed on him, with malevolent intent. In the meantime, Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, having received his sight, followed him to Jerusalem. One of the great ironies of this Gospel passage is that the one man who couldn't see with his eyes was the only man able to see with his heart. This gospel passage is a meditation on the different kinds of blindness.

 

A blind beggar’s misery is compounded: worse than the sum of the misery of a blind person and a beggar. He is totally at our mercy, stretching out his hand into the darkness, unable to gauge our mood, not knowing if we even see him.

Every believer is that man, most of the time. Faith is dark knowledge. Often we lift up our hands in prayer, and we feel no presence of the Other (God); we hear neither a promise nor a refusal. That is the time to remember Bartimaeus. He is placed here in the gospel story as an encouragement for us.

When he heard that Jesus was passing by he began to shout, “Have pity on me!” People told him to shut up, he was making too much noise. But he shouted all the more. “Call him,” Jesus said.... “Cheer up! On your feet, they told him, he’s calling you.” Then, the account continues, “throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.” He came, of course, still in the dark.

Notice that he threw aside his cloak! It was a strange thing for a blind person to do: would he find it again? Blind people have great trouble finding things, they need the world to stay put. See how carefully they place things, caressing them almost. But sighted people are forever throwing things around. In throwing his cloak aside Bartimaeus acted like a sighted man. While all the sighted people held their cloaks and their possession around them with careful fingers, he alone leaped up, threw aside his cloak and ran to meet the Lord.

We say seeing is believing. We put great stress on seeing. “Sight is our principal source of knowledge,” said Aristotle, twenty-five centuries ago. And western culture has followed him particularly in this; it has a marked preference for sight over the other senses. Seeing is believing, we say. The meaning of today’s gospel reading is best expressed by turning that phrase around. Believing is seeing. There is a kind of seeing that is even more basic than the sight of our eyes. That is the kind of sight that Jesus restores.

Let’s again briefly go back to Mark’s emphasis on the seemingly insignificant detail: “he threw aside his cloak. To get at it, we need first of all to understand the role of the cloak in ancient Palestine. It was heavy and thick, and it was also the most versatile item of Palestinian clothing at the time.

It was protection against the rapid and frequent temperature changes, insulation against the harsh Judean winds, and at night it doubled as a blanket, especially for the poorer residents of the Holy Land, like Bartimaeus.

For these reasons, and because St Mark highlights it so clearly, the Fathers of the Church have seen in this cloak a symbol of self- sufficiency, a symbol of our deep-seated tendency to think that we are capable of solving all of our problems on our own. The cloak symbolizes all those things that we wrongly depend on for happiness, that we tend to idolize: good looks, intelligence, athletic ability, money, good education, success, popularity...

Following Christ, obeying his commandments and teachings, means putting these other things – good and valuable though they may be – into second place and trusting that friendship with God alone is the real source of the fulfillment we most yearn for.

 

Matthew (Mt 10:59), says in his gospel: “Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.”  Bartimaeus was willing to “lose his life,” to leave behind his comfort and sense of self-sufficiency, in order to put himself entirely under Christ’s care.

Insofar as we trust him completely and follow him unconditionally, leaving all cloaks behind, we will be able to experience the full power of his transforming grace, as the blind beggar did.

And we, like the blind man, want to see him more clearly; we want to know him, and to know how to follow him more closely – that's why we came today. But to make that happen, we need to leave behind our cloak of self-sufficiency.

Let’s pray the prayer of St. Ignatius today: Lord, grant that I may see you more clearly, love you more dearly, and follow you more nearly, day by day.