Calling Out All The More, 33rd Monday (I), November 15, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Albert the Great
November 15, 2021
1 Mc 1:10-15.41-43.54-57.62-63, Ps 119, Lk 18:35-43

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click  below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• On Saturday Jesus gave us the parable of the importune woman bothering the unjust judge in order to convey to us the necessity of “praying always without losing heart.” Today we encounter the living illustration of what he was teaching in the blind man by the side of the road whom St. Mark in his version of the same scene identifies as Bartimaeus.
• Like rabbis were accustomed to do on the triennial pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the major feasts, Jesus was teaching the crowds along the journey. Bartimaeus was sitting by the roadside begging. He was in Jericho, literally the lowest place on earth. He heard the commotion of the crowd and asked what was happening. Upon being told that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, he immediately began to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!” He didn’t cry out for alms, which would have been small. He didn’t cry out at that point for a miracle. He cried out simply for mercy. He had doubtless heard of Jesus’ reputation for working miracles to the north in Galilee and was responding with faith: the fact that he called him “Son of David” was a sign he believed Jesus was the Messiah. But his crying out for Jesus was annoying those who were trying to hear Jesus’ teaching. So the first people in the group rebuked him and told him to shut his trap. That only led him, however, to cry out all the more, “Son of David, have pity on me!” The word St. Luke uses here means basically an animal cry, something coming deep from his woundedness.
• Jesus stopped and ordered that Bartimaeus be brought to him. For Jesus, caring for this man was more important than whatever he was teaching at that moment. Likely, if St. Luke’s account was chronological, Jesus had been talking about the virtues of prayer, like persistence in the prayer of the importune widow and humility in the parable of the publican and the pharisee praying in the Temple. Jesus was about to show how God responds to persistent and humble prayers! Jesus asked Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?,” and Bartimaeus said, “Lord, please let me see!” The word used — anablepo — means in Greek to “see again.” Hence he was asking Jesus to restore the sight that he had lost. It would have been very easy for Jesus to come to meet Bartimaeus exactly where he was begging. But Jesus loved him too much and understood the human heart too well to do that. Instead he drew near, but then he had Bartimaeus get up to come to him, to exercise Bartimaeus’ freedom, to stoke his desire, to give him greater participation in the miracle Jesus himself was about to accomplish. It takes courage to get up and leave our comfort zone to respond to the Lord. Bartimaeus had that courage and did. St. Mark tells us, “He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.” The cloak was his outer garment that kept him warm at night. It was in a sense his security blanket. It was quite valuable to him and part of his life. But he was intentionally embracing a new life and establishing a new security. He left it behind, which is not just a fact but an important symbol of how he was thinking more about clinging to Jesus and the new life for which he was hoping than clinging to the past. The second element is he “sprang up.” Even though he was blind, he got up immediately. He always raced to respond to his being called by the Lord. Unlike the excuse makers in other sections of the Gospel who said that they would follow Jesus after they had buried their father (who might die three decades later), inspected their oxen, enjoyed their honeymoon, etc., Bartimaeus responded with alacrity. To some degree, Bartimaeus was already seeing by faith but he wanted to see Jesus with physical eyes so that he would be able to do exactly what he did once he was cured, to “follow him, giving glory to God.” Jesus replied, “Have sight; your faith has saved you.” The Lord not only gave him his wish to see, but heard his initial cry to have mercy on him, and Jesus’ generosity far outdid Bartimaeus’ imagination to ask. Faith in response to God leads to salvation, and even though Bartimaeus didn’t dare ask for that, God gave it. Bartimaeus used his sight and his freedom to follow Jesus. He left the depth of Jericho behind and followed Jesus up to Jerusalem. St. Luke’s comment, “He immediately received his sight and followed him, giving glory to God, and when they saw this, all the people gave praise to God” (Lk 18:43), suggests he spent the rest of his life glorifying God in such a way that others joined him in that divine praise.
• This cry of Bartimaeus is one of the most beautiful and frequent Christian aspirations: Domine, ut videam!, “Lord, I want to see.” Many times we too give into blindness, we can no longer see our dignity, or see past the temptations of the evil one, or see God in the midst of daily life. We can give up in the pursuit of seeing and living in the light. That’s what happened to the Jews in the first reading today. Many of them lost a sense of their dignity and sought to accommodate themselves to the way of life of the Ptolemeian Greeks from Egypt, covering up the signs of their consecration, giving in to their bellies like the pagans, not recognizing that their circumcision and their dietary laws were means to make sure that they would always order their natural sexual and physical appetites to God. Some remained faithful, as we’ll be seeing in readings later this week, persevering even to the point of their death. We also celebrate today a saint who is known for his brilliance but should likewise be known for his perseverance. St. Albert the Great, the 13th century Dominican Doctor of the Church, ended up writing 38 huge volumes on theology, Biblical interpretation, physics, geography, astronomy, mineralogy, chemistry and biology, and is the patron saint of natural scientists. His prodigious output might lead us to presume that all of this came easy to him, but it didn’t. He needed to persevere through various struggles in his studies. He said later on in life that he had become very discouraged and was strongly inclined to return to secular life but our Lady appeared to him and promised to ask for him illuminating grace in his studies if he would persevere. He decided to persevere, he received that light, and he bore tremendous fruit.
• Today we began Mass by echoing Bartimaeus’ cry to have mercy on us — and Jesus has had mercy in calling us to himself over and again. Today the same Jesus who has passed by our lives and invited us to follow him passes by here, summoning us by name, and asking, “What do you want me to do for you!” With gratitude for all his gifts, we ask him for the grace to see Him in the Eucharist, to see him in those we serve, to see him in all those crying out, and finally with, we pray, Bartimaeus, with St. Albert and all the saints who always pray around his throne, one day to behold him face-to-face!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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