Taking Courage from Jesus’ Call, 30th Sunday (B), October 27, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx
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 today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• “What do you want me to do for you?” Which one of us would not want the Lord to ask us the question he asks Bartimaeus in today’s Gospel? Bartimaeus’ response is one that has become a common aspiration of Christians through the centuries: “Lord, I want to see!” The early saints saw in this expression more than a cry from a physically blind man. They recognized in it the plea of all those in every generation who have been in any type of darkness. “Lord, I want to see!” See what? We learn from Bartimaeus the purpose of our sight. The Gospel tells us, “Having regained his sight, he followed Jesus on the way.” Just like St. Peter’s mother-in-law, as soon as she had been cured of a severe fever, used her health to serve others (Mk 1:30-31), so Bartimaeus, now that he could see, used the gift of his sight to follow the divine Giver, the Light of the World (Jn 8:2). Our eyes — both our physical eyes and the eyes of our heart — are gifts of God so that we might see Jesus and follow him. Our whole nature has been created by God so that we might say, like those Greeks in the Gospel who had not yet met the Lord but presented themselves to Philip: “We want to see Jesus!” (Jn 12:21).
• We want to see Jesus in prayer. We want to see Jesus in the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. We want to see Jesus in others, in the faces of those we love, in the faces of those we find difficult to love or like. We want to see Jesus behind the distressing disguises of the poor, the sick, the lonely, the homeless, the abandoned, the blind. We want to behold Christ’s face in the beauties of creation. We want to see him behind each of the commandments, teaching us how to love. We want the eyes to see his will in our daily life, in the present and for the future. We want to see him in the deliberations of conscience guiding us in the choices we have to make. As the Holy Father said in his new encyclical on the Sacred Heart released on Thursday, we want to see him on fire with love for us and the human race. Ultimately, we want to see him forever face-to-face in heaven, smiling upon us. But so often we’re blinded. Sin blinds us. Worries blind us. Pain and suffering blind us. Hatred and prejudices blind us. Others, including those we love, can get in the way and obstruct our vision. Today, the Lord comes to us and asks us, as he asked Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” As we enter into the scene, we behold not only how Jesus interacted with this particular beggar who was blind, but how he intervenes in each of our vocations and how he seeks to transform us to minister to others. Let’s try today, like in lectio divina, to ponder the various elements of this rich scene together, drawing lessons from Jesus’ interaction in our life.
• “As Jesus was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a sizable crowd” — Jericho is the lowest place on earth, more below sea level than any other location. Jesus was passing through the depths of the human experience in order to ascend the 15-mile road up hill that leads to Jerusalem, where he would suffer and die to lift us up. There’s no abyss into which Jesus wouldn’t descend for us.
• “Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son of Timaeus, sat by the roadside begging” — Bartimaeus was not 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 to “see again.” He hadn’t just lost his sight, however. To some degree, he had lost the dignity he would have had. He was sitting by the roadside begging. He could not rely on himself anymore. He needed help. 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, as many times he has likewise come to us.
• “On hearing that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by” — Not coincidentally at all, so many times in our life Jesus enters right when we need him most, right when we’re at our weakest and most desperate. But he “passes by.” He doesn’t intrude. He draws near but he still wants to engage our freedom, rather than force himself and his love upon us. He wants us to move, too.
• “He began to cry out, ‘Jesus, 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 had doubtless heard of Jesus’ reputation for working miracles to the north in Galilee and was responding in faith. The fact that he called him “Son of David” was a sign he believed Jesus was the Messiah. The word St. Luke uses for crying out means basically an animal cry, something coming deep from his woundedness. And his prayer would be answered.
• “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. For Jesus caring for this man was more important than what he was teaching at that moment, because he was about to show the Gospel rather than just verbally describe it. He was also going to show how he responds to persistent prayer.
• “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.” 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 understands the human heart too well to do that. Instead, he drew near, he got close, but then, as I mentioned above, 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. Similarly, on many occasions we need a similar courage to respond to the Lord. It might be getting up and going to God rather than remaining where we are. It might be helping out with some form of charity rather than remaining isolated. But 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.
• “He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus” — We see two crucial elements here in the response of Bartimaeus that are meant to be part of every vocation story. The first is that he “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 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. That’s key to understanding the greatness of the call Christ gives to come to him, something we can be grateful for having heard and having responded to, we pray, with similar immediacy.
• “What do you want me to do for you?” — Jesus asks us this question always with the love of the most generous person who has ever existed. What do you want? What do you seek? 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. Likewise, Jesus, each time we meet him, at the beginning of the day in the Morning Offering, in our Holy Hour, at the altar, on both sides of the Confessional screen, in the disguise of the poor, asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” On one level we 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.
• “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, as I previously noted, is, “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.
• “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 quoand had left Bartimaeus free to choose his path. That’s what makes how he used it so much more relevant.
• “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!
• That brings us to an important application of this Gospel to our mission of charity in the world. In 2012, Pope Benedict used this scene of the cure of Bartimaeus to describe what we need to do to help the blind men and women of our day encounter Christ as he is passing by. He commented, “The state of blindness has great significance in the Gospels. It represents man who needs God’s light, the light of faith, if he is to know reality truly and to walk the path of life.  It is essential to acknowledge one’s blindness, one’s need for this light, otherwise one could remain blind for ever. Bartimaeus, then, at that strategic point of Mark’s account, is presented as a model.  He was not blind from birth, but he lost his sight. He represents man who has lost the light and knows it, but has not lost hope: he knows how to seize the opportunity to encounter Jesus and he entrusts himself to him for healing.  … Bartimaeus represents man aware of his pain and crying out to the Lord, confident of being healed.  His simple and sincere plea is exemplary, and indeed … it has found its way into the tradition of Christian prayer. … From this perspective, Bartimaeus could represent those who live in regions that were evangelized long ago, where the light of faith has grown dim and people have drifted away from God, no longer considering him relevant for their lives.  These people have therefore lost a precious treasure, they have ‘fallen’ from a lofty dignity, … their lives have lost a secure and sound direction and they have become, often unconsciously, beggars for the meaning of existence.  They are the many in need of a … new encounter with Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God (cf. Mk 1:1), who can open their eyes afresh and teach them the path.” He concludes that we, “who have had the experience of being healed by God through Jesus Christ” are called to go out to the present culture of the west, which is like ancient Jericho, where so many blind men and women are crying out for meaning and mercy, perhaps without explicitly realizing it, with the light of Christ, lived in daily life, in the hope that we may guide them to the source of that light, Jesus himself, who wants to lead them from the depths of the darkness of the modern Jericho to the radiant heights of the celestial Jerusalem.
• At Mass today we, like Bartimaeus, have cried out, over and again, “Kyrie, eleison! Christe, eleison, Kyrie eleison!” “Lord, Christ, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us!” Jesus has drawn near and asked, “What do you want me to do for you?.” Through the Word of God he has sought to restore our sight. He is our high priest spoken about in today’s passage from the Letter to the Hebrews who is able to “deal patiently” with us because he took on our humanity. He is the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy in the first reading, who will gather “the blind and the lame” from the ends of the earth and lead them “so that none shall stumble.” He is the one who is about to give us a greater gift even than he gave Bartimaeus. He will give us himself, on the inside. No matter what difficulties we may be experiencing, no matter the depths to which we may have sunk, Jesus is right now passing by, hoping to pass through and within us. Let us take courage because Jesus is calling us. 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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