Take Courage, Get Up, Jesus Is Calling You, 30th Sunday (B), October 27, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
October 27, 2024
Jer 31:7-9, Ps 126, Heb 5:1-6, Mk 10:46-52

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• One of the most important things for university students is to answer the big questions of life: Why did God make me? What is the purpose of my life? What is he calling me to do with the gift of my life and the time he has given me? In religious terms, these are called vocational questions. This week, as we prepare for All Saints Day, it’s an opportunity for us all to focus on our most fundamental calling, which is to become a saint. We either become holy and fit to dwell in God’s presence forever or we will spend eternity self-alienated from God in Hell. Within that universal call to holiness, however, there are many paths. Most Catholics are summoned to seek holiness in the Sacrament of Matrimony, as they seek to be God’s instrument to help sanctify their spouse and their children. Others will seek it through religious or consecrated life. Today’s second reading focuses on the call to the priesthood. Others will strive to become holy in some other form of self-giving love to God and to others. But it’s important for us to think about, and pray about, the question of our vocation in life and to be ready to respond freely, wholeheartedly and joyfully when God makes our life purpose clear.
• Today’s readings have a clear vocational thrust to them. In the first reading, we see how God through the Prophet Jeremiah called the people of the ten tribes of northern Israel home. He called them as a loving Father. He summoned them as a family. He called them all, leaving none forgotten: not just the men and boys, the strong and sturdy, but mothers, children, even the lame and the blind, promising that he himself will console and guide them, leading them on level roads so that none will trip, directing them to brooks of water to stay hydrated for the journey. This is an image of the way God calls us all through the fulfillment of the twelve tribes of Israel and Judah, which is the Church, the family Christ himself came to form, to lead us all to the house of the Father where he has gone to prepare a place for us.
• While the first reading focuses on the universal call to holiness in this life and the next, the Gospel helps us to perceive many elements of the personal call God gives us in Jesus’ dramatic encounter with the blind man in Jericho, Bartimaeus. Jericho is the lowest place on earth, more below sea level than any other location on the planet. Jesus went there, symbolic of the lowest depths of the human experience, showing that there’s no abyss into which Jesus won’t descend for us in order to lead us on the 20-mile uphill trek to Jerusalem, where he would suffer and die to lift us up with him permanently to the heavenly Jerusalem. There he encounters Bartimaeus, a blind man, begging by the roadside. Bartimaeus had not been born blind, but had become blind over the course of time. We see that in the verb he uses later, anablepo, asking Jesus in the Greek literally to “see again.” He hadn’t just lost his sight, however; to some degree, he had lost his dignity. He was sitting by the roadside begging for help. He could not rely on himself anymore. He had hit rock bottom. He was in the depth of the valley of darkness in the lowest place on earth. But it was precisely in that spiritual poverty that Jesus would come to meet him and to call him.
• When he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, he began to cry out, “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me!” When others tried to silence him, he cried out all the more — the word St. Luke uses for crying out means basically an animal cry, something coming deep from his woundedness — “Son of David, have pity on me!”Bartimaeus 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 cried out for Jesus. He had doubtless heard of Jesus’ reputation for working miracles to the north in Galilee and was appealing in faith. The fact that he called him “Son of David” was a sign he believed Jesus was the Messiah. And his prayer would be answered.
• That’s the prelude to the vocational call: our need for Jesus; Jesus’ drawing near; our calling out to him in prayer and in faith. Then that leads to the concrete vocational moment. “Jesus stopped and said, ‘Call him.’” Like rabbis were accustomed to do on all their pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the major feasts, Jesus was teaching the crowds along the journey. But when he heard Bartimaeus’ pleas, he stopped in his tracks and ordered that Bartimaeus be brought to him. And so they said to Bartimaeus, “Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you.’” What a beautiful expression, something that should be part of our vocabulary with everyone in the Church! “Take courage, get up, Jesus is calling you.” And Bartimaeus “threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus” It takes courage to get up and leave our comfort zone to respond to the Lord. Bartimaeus had that courage and did. When Jesus calls, he always challenges us to move. He who is always on the move, he who is always passing by waiting for an invitation, perpetually invites us to get up from where we are and follow him. That’s the fundamental moment of the vocational call. The courage needed does not just mean we leave our safe space, but that we even leave behind certain things that give us security. St. Mark tells us, Bartimaeus “threw aside his cloak.” 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. There’s some clear baptismal imagery here as we leave behind our own garments and are clothed in Christ. The second element is he “sprang up.” Even though he was blind, he jumped up immediately. He 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. That’s key to understanding the greatness of the call Christ gives to come to him. In every vocation, we need to be bold, get up, throw aside whatever might hinder us and come to Jesus. We can often be afraid. We can often want to stay immobilized by a sense of unworthiness. We can want to hold on to everything and they can hinder us from coming to Jesus. We can not have any sense of urgency or immediacy. Jesus wants to help us in each of these areas as he did the son of Timaeus.
• The next stage is Jesus’ question: “What do you want me to do for you?” He wants us to examine our desires and ask for the big stuff, the most important. We’ve been made ultimately to want him. Bartimaeus didn’t ask for alms, because he wanted far more. On one level Bartimaeus and each of us should be saying to the Lord in obedience, “What do you want me to do for you, Lord?,” but it’s he who asks us, because he deeply desires our happiness. Our vocation begins with Jesus’ asking us what we want from him, and what we ultimately want is his help so that we might do what would please him most, because that is what would be us most deeply. In Bartimaeus’ case, he said, “Master, I want to see.” The Latin words for this have become a very popular Christian aspiration, popularized by St. Josemaria Escrivà: “Domine, ut videam!” Bartimaeus says, “I want to see! I want to live in the light. I want to see things as they really are. I want to see you!” The verb used here in Greek, is anablepo, “I want to see again.” He wants to live in grace again. He wants to live anew in the light. He knows what he lost and he knows where to find it. To say to Jesus, “I want to see!,” is not just to turn to a healer and ask him to restore his vision. It’s to say, “I want to live in your vision.” St. John in his Gospel would recall Jesus saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will have the light of life.” That’s the gift for which Bartimaeus was begging. Today we echo that prayer, begging Jesus to take out whatever planks are in our eyes so that we may see him clearly and have the chance to live with him in the light. That’s what we focus on here at Columbia with our motto, “In your light we will see the light!” (Ps 36:10).
• After Bartimaeus asks for the miracle, Jesus replies, “Go your way; your faith has saved you.” Jesus says two very beautiful things to him upon healing him. The first is about a greater miracle than the healing of his physical 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 request that, God nevertheless gave it. And likewise in response to our bold trust in him, in response to our leaving our stuff behind and hustling toward him, in response to our sincere telling him what we want, God responds by giving himself to us and granting us far more than we had implored. The second thing we see in this scene is that Jesus continues to engage Bartimaeus’ vocational freedom. He says, “Go your way!” In other words, he was giving him the chance to choose what to do with his sight. He wasn’t going to make him an indentured servant for the rest of his life, paying off the debt of the Jesus’ spiritual optometry. No, Jesus had given without a quid pro quo and had left Bartimaeus free to choose his path. That’s what makes how he used it so much more relevant. Mark tells us, “Immediately he received his sight and followed him on the way.” Bartimaeus used his freedom to follow Jesus. He left the depth of Jericho behind and followed him up to Jerusalem, he followed him on Palm Sunday, he followed him on the Way of the Cross, he followed him, ultimately, all the way. And St. Luke comments, “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). He spent the rest of his life glorifying God in such a way that others joined him in that divine praise. The end of our vocational story is meant to be a similar glorification of God, hoping that our example will be contagious!
• So we see all of these vocational elements in the encounter of Bartimaeus: Jesus’ drawing near; our prayer and crying out to Jesus to cure our inability to see what he’s asking of us; Jesus’ calling us to come to him more closely; our being helped to take courage, to get up and draw near; our asking Jesus to help us to see; his curing our blindness and trying to give us salvation by faith; our being give the free choice to go our way; and then our choosing to follow him, glorifying him.
• These pertain to every vocation, to the universal call to holiness and to the various means given to fulfill that vocation, whether marriage, consecrated and religious life, self-giving love in the middle of the world and others. But because of the second reading today, I’d like to focus a little bit on the priesthood, where many today need God’s help to see Jesus more clearly. The priest is ordained to act in the person of Christ, in his preaching, in his celebration of the sacraments instituted by the Lord, and in his shepherding God’s family. But for several reasons, both due to some of the blind spots of our culture as well as to the counter-witness given by some clergy, it has become harder for many Catholics to see Christ working through his priests. The Letter to the Hebrews mentions first the Old Testament levitical priesthood and then the priesthood of Christ, the true high priest. But what it says is applicable the priests of the New Covenant, those who are ordained in the line of Melchizedek to act in the person of Christ the Eternal High Priest. Let’s ponder a little bit what’s revealed.
• “Every high priest,” the Letter to the Hebrews says, “is chosen from among men and put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness; and because of this he must offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for those of the people. And one does not presume to take this honor on himself, but takes it only when called by God, just as Aaron was.”
• We learn various truths here. The first thing is that priests are “chosen,” taking on the priesthood “only when called by God.” Priests are not elected or appointed by the people, because even if all the eight billion men and women in the world got together and elected one person to act on their behalf, they could not give this person the power to change bread and wine into the Lord’s body and blood or to forgive your sins, which only God can do (Mk 2:7). The priest is chosen directly and sent out by Christ. We call the priesthood a vocation, because the priest is “called” by God himself. That’s the first thing the letter to the Hebrew teaches us.
• The second is what the priest’s fundamental mission is. Hebrews tells us that is “put in charge of the things pertaining to God on their behalf.” His responsibility is to steward the great treasures of God for all the people. God has entrusted priests with his word; the priest is, in some respects, the voice or sound-system of Christ, proclaiming Christ’s Gospel. He’s entrusted them with his priestly work in the sacraments, investing them with the power to bring his own body and blood down to earth. He’s likewise entrusted them, whose role is to offer Christ’s own self-gift and sacrifice for sins, with the power of the Holy Spirit to forgive sins in his name (Jn 20:19-23). He’s also made them shepherds of His flock, so that they might be foster-fathers of the family Christ came from heaven to earth to establish. For the sake of God’s people — for each of us and all of us— Jesus did this, to perpetuate his saving work. And how important the priest is for this saving work! As the patron saint of priests, St. John Vianney used to say in his catecheses, if the Blessed Mother appeared here live today, she could not give you Jesus again as she was able to do to the shepherds and the Magi in Bethlehem. Even if all the angels and archangels were here, acting in unison, not even all of them together could forgive even our least venial sin. The priest is the only person in the entire universe capable of doing this, and he does this, not by his own merits and powers, but because he has been chosen by God and given these powers for the sanctification of all God’s people.
• The third reality is that priests are chosen from “among men.” He’s not selected from the angels. He’s certainly not God. He’s fully human, he’s full of human weaknesses and frailties, just like any other person alive. This truth has a good side and a bad side to it. The good side we read in Hebrews: “He is able to deal gently with the ignorant and the wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness.” The priest has human emotions, desires, and struggles. God has chosen “earthly vessels” (2 Cor 4:7) to minister his sacraments, and this is one of God’s great gifts. To preach the great news of forgiveness from sins, the Lord has chosen to send out ordinary reconciled sinners, men like St. Peter, whose first words to the Lord were “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Lk 5:8). They are meant to be un-intimidating human instruments, subject to weakness, who trust in and receive the Lord’s mercy. Priests do not stand outside of the human messiness of sin, but are in solidarity with sinners and are meant to tangible witnesses that forgiveness and liberation from sin is possible. They’re first sheep, and then shepherds; first disciples, then apostles. That’s the good side to the priest’s humanity. But there’s also a bad side: just like any other human being, the priest is capable of being tempted, giving into temptation and sinning. We know all too well that some priests have given into temptation to commit some truly heinous and scandalous sins. This does not mean that God has made a mistake. The reality is, however, that the men God chooses, invests with priestly gifts and powers, and to whom he is always faithful may be faithful in return or not. God chooses men prone to sin like any other, and sometimes like other Christians they choose to sin. We can see this lesson about the bad side of the priest’s humanity from the beginning. Before he chose his twelve apostles, Jesus spent all night in prayer to his Father (Lk 6:12). He taught, formed and loved them intimately for three years. He gave them power to preach in his name, to cast out demons, to cure the sick, even to raise the dead (Mt 10:7-8). He called them “friends” and treated them as his friends (Jn 15:15). Yet, in spite of all this, one of them betrayed him for 30 pieces of silver, another betrayed him to stay warm by a fire, and the rest betrayed him to try to save their own hides. But 11 of the 12 came back and almost all of them died to plant the seeds of the Gospel. That’s still the same pattern today.  Even though some in certain circles like to focus more on priests who fail than priests who are faithful, there are so many more who remain faithful, whose names don’t appear in the newspapers, who are still offering their lives to serve Christ and to serve you out of love.
• What are the faithful called to do in the face of these realities of the priesthood that the Letter to the Hebrews reveals? The first thing is to be grateful to Christ for the gift of the priesthood and for the divine gifts He gives us through the priesthood. Without the priest, there would be no Eucharist. Without the priest, we would have no way on earth of assuredly having our sins absolved. Without the priest, we would probably not even have unity among believers. We need first and always to thank God for the gift of the priesthood, for the sacraments the Lord makes possible uniquely through it, and for the priests who have said yes to the Lord’s call. The second thing is to pray for future priests who can continue to do these miracles of God’s people. Jesus commanded us to pray to the Lord of the Harvest to send more laborers into his vineyard (Mt 9:38). We’re called to do this because priests are not chosen by us or appointed by the Church, but are “chosen” and “called by God.” If we really look at the priesthood for what it is, we will pray, as well, that God call and choose young men from Columbia, our roommates, even for girls our boyfriends, to say yes to him in this way. That leads to the third response we’re supposed to have, based on the humanity of the priest. We’re called to remember that priests are not angels, but are chosen from among men, men just like the men we know. There are young men here in Church today who might think that because of all their imperfections, the Lord could not possibly be calling them to be priests. They and all of us in the Church are called to recall that the Lord might be calling them not despite their imperfections, but because of them, so that they, aware of their weakness, may be able to “deal gently with the ignorant and the wayward. Fourth and lastly, because of the “bad side” of the human reality of the priesthood, we’re called to pray for priests, that they remain faithful to the Lord, so that they can help all God’s people remain faithful. The great priest-saints of the history of the Church have said, very humbly, “But for the grace of God go I.” One of the great saints of all time, St. Philip Neri, used to wake up every morning and turn to the Lord very humbly in prayer, saying, “Lord, it’s me, Philip. Please help me so that I do not betray you today.” Priests simply are always in need of prayers that they remain faithful to this grace. If you want holier priests, I encourage you to pray more for them. We priests need your prayers. I’m so grateful to the people across the world, including here at this parish and within our diocese, who had a prayer and fast day for priests yesterday. We need your prayers!
• As we prepare to move from the Word of God to the Word made Flesh, I’d like to finish with a small mention of how the Lord originally called me to the priesthood. It was when I was four, attending daily Mass with my mother. I watched elderly Fr. Jon Cantwell say the words of consecration and then, with great effort because he knees were bad, hobble down the marble steps of the sanctuary to give God to the people old enough and lucky enough to receive him. I was transfixed as I watched him hold Jesus Christ in his hands and then give him to others. I saw then that the priest had to be the luckiest person in the whole universe, capable of holding God and giving him to others. He was entrusted not just the things of God but God himself, incarnate, for their behalf. That’s when God inspired me to ask for the gift of the priesthood, which he confirmed 18 years later when I was in college. Now as I prepare to be God’s instrument in the celebration of the most important event that takes place anywhere on any day, as I get ready for something that still blows me away — to have bread and wine totally change into Jesus’ body and blood in my hands and then have the privilege to give God to you — I still believe that the priest is the luckiest person in the whole world. At this Mass that we began crying out to God, like Bartimaeus, “Kyrie, eleison! Christe, eleison, Kyrie eleison!” “Lord, Christ, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us!,” in which through the Word of God he has sought to restore our sight, may God give us all the eyes to see him in the Eucharist and how lucky we are just to be in his presence, not to mention to receive him. The Lord has indeed done great things for us and is still doing so: we are filled with joy! Let us take courage because Jesus is calling us to be his disciples, because he is calling us to be saints, because he is calling us to particular vocations within the Church. Let us remember the promises of our baptism, throw off our security blankets and attachments, spring up and come to him. And let us, like those following and listening to Jesus along the journey, be strengthened by him to go to those who are on the sides of the modern road, begging for meaning, and tell them, “Take courage. Jesus is calling” you, too!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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