Gospel & Reflection For Thirtieth Sunday in OrdinaryTime
Mk 10:46-52
As Jesus was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a sizable crowd,
Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son of Timaeus,
sat by the roadside begging.
On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth,
he began to cry out and say,
“Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.”
And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent.
But he kept calling out all the more,
“Son of David, have pity on me.”
Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”
So they called the blind man, saying to him,
“Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you.”
He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.
Jesus said to him in reply, “What do you want me to do for you?”
The blind man replied to him, “Master, I want to see.”
Jesus told him, “Go your way; your faith has saved you.”
Immediately he received his sight
and followed him on the way.
Reflection
Friends, along with our expected elections, the U.S. Presidential Election is getting close too. Closer still, seemingly, is the margin between Trump and Harris. It is a race too close to call for many unbiased political commentators. However, Al Gore, you may remember, served as the 45th Vice-President of American from 1993 – 2002 under President Bill Clinton. He won the Noble Peace Prize in 2007 for his work on publicising greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and his work in laying the foundation for counteracting such change. He likened our reluctance to acknowledge man-made climate change to the refusal of tobacco companies to acknowledge the link between smoking tobacco and lung cancer. It was a very personal connection.
Gore’s older sister Nancy had died of lung cancer at the age of forty-six. She had been smoking from the age of thirteen. Their father was a tobacco farmer all his life, but his daughter’s death had forced him to confront the lethal effects of smoking. Gore explained: “The idea that we had been part of the economic pattern that produced the cigarettes that produced the cancer…it was so painful on many levels. My father who had grown tobacco all his life, stopped. Whatever explanation had seemed to make sense in the past just didn’t cut it anymore. I know that it is just human nature to take time to connect the dots. But I also know that there can be a day of reckoning when you wish you had connected the dots more quickly.”
Al Gore had first hand experience of the old saying, ‘There is none so blind as those who will not see.’ Well, there is many also in our world today who are slow in connecting the dots of faith and belief, and their importance and relevance. We live in a time overly critical of Faith and people of Faith. Believing people are accused of being ‘blind’ to reason and rationality, experimentation, and science. But this is both untrue and insulting.
Faith isn’t unreasonable, irrational, or opposed to science. In the same way, believers are not illogical, unthinking, or anti-science. For example, the well-known ‘Big Bang’ theory of creation is the theory of an observable, constantly expanding universe. But who was one of the first people to develop and publish this theory? The answer is not just Alexander Friedmann or Edwin Hubble but a man by the name of Georges Lemaitre. His name is not often mentioned, or his work acknowledged in scientific circles because it just happens that he was a Belgium born, Jesuit Priest! Faith is not opposed to science.
Also, is it not our reason and rationality that helps to work out what we believe and why we believe it in the first place? We are not robots, programmed externally. We are human beings; supposedly thinking, reasoning, questioning, rational. It is with these abilities that we reach our own conclusions about everything, including God. Faith might take us beyond reason and science, but it never contradicts them.
In our Gospel, Jesus cures Bartimaeus of his blindness. However, though physically blind, in matters of faith and belief, Bartimaeus had better vision than most. In a very reasoned, rational, and believing manner, Bartimaeus had long connected the dots about who Jesus was and what Jesus could do for Him. So, while the crowd were looking for entertainment, wondering what would Jesus do next, Bartimaeus was looking for God. When he sensed God’s closeness, he called out to Him as loudly as possible from the depth of his being. Jesus hears his call and cures him. With faith and courage, Bartimaeus then follows Jesus on His journey, he walks the way of the Lord.
Friends, Christianity, is above all a way of seeing but seeing often with the eyes of the heart and the mind, sensing at the depth of our being that we are a created, loved and chosen people. It is a conviction of soul, mind, and body, much more than a physical observation with our eyes.
Everything in the Christian life flows and circles around the transformation of this vision in our lives because sensing God within, calls us to witness to Him without – in our discipleship and in all that we say and do. It is this witnessing, this walking the road with Christ, which transforms our faith into something concrete and felt, something beautiful and purposeful.
Let us thank God today for the gift of our faith which we see and feel in our heart, soul, mind, and body. Let us never fail to connect the dots of the importance and wonderful effects of this faith in our lives.
Fr. Richard