27 Oct 2024 – 30th Sunday (Year B)
27 Oct 2024 – 30th Sunday (Year B)
(1) Jeremiah 31:7-9
God promises to lead back the remnant of Israel
Thus says the Lord:
“Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and raise shouts for the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, “Save, O Lord, your people, the remnant of Israel.”
See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labour, together; a great company, they shall return here. With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back, I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble; for I have become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.”
Responsorial: from Psalm 126
R./: The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy
When the Lord brought back the captives of Zion,
we were like men dreaming.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with rejoicing. (R./)
Then they said among the nations,
The Lord has done great things for them.
The Lord has done great things for us;
we are glad indeed. (R./)
Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the torrents in the southern desert.
Those that sow in tears
shall reap rejoicing. (R./)
Although they go forth weeping,
carrying the seed to be sown,
they shall come back rejoicing,
carrying their sheaves. (R./)
(2) Hebrews 5:1-6
Like Melchizedek, Jesus is a priest forever, our mediator with God
Every high priest chosen from among mortals is 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 honour, but takes it only when called by God, just as Aaron was. So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you;” as he says also in another place, “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”
Gospel: Mark 10:46-52
Jesus hears the prayer of a blind man and gives him back his sight
As Jesus and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.
Blindness and Sight
Contrasting previous blindness with the sight of faith — the metaphor is ancient (Plato’s cave) and takes us beyond religion only. We all have blind spots, some minor, others not so minor. Usually, it takes some event to trigger the recognition that we are not seeing with 20:20 vision. The same can be true at the level of faith. Perhaps we could make our own the request of Bartimaeus: Let me see again!
An Unlikely Optimist
There are other stories in the gospel about blind people being healed, but the one about Bartimaeus is told in the liveliest way, and it has a nice lesson for us. The poor man had lost his sight, and when he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, he had to make a choice, quickly. He could just sit there and let Jesus pass him by, or he could grab the moment, and ask to be healed. Jesus was said to have the power to heal, but you had to get his attention and ask to be healed.
In an American cartoon by Schultz, a sharp-tongued little girl called Lucy was trying to reform her schoolmate Charlie Browne. She glared at him critically. “Do you know what’s wrong with you, Charlie Browne?” she said. “What?” he asked nervously. Lucy fumed at him and said, “What’s really wrong with you is that, well, you don’t want to know what’s wrong with you!” Bartimaeus was not like that, for he knew quite well what was wrong with him, and was determined to have it cured! When he called out to Jesus, people around him tried to get him to shut up, and stay quiet. But he just shouted louder, and kept shouting until Jesus stopped and called him over. Although Bartimaeus was blind, Jesus stayed where he was and let the blind man come to him. If he really wanted to be cured, he would find a way to get to Jesus.
It was obvious that the man was blind, and yet Jesus asked him “What do you want me to do for you?” The man had to clearly name his problem, and do so himself. If one of us needs to be cured of something, whether blindness, alcoholism, depression or any addiction, then we need to come to Jesus and tell him what’s wrong. We need to NAME it. Of course he knows our needs, and yet he says “Ask and you will receive.” “Your heavenly Father will surely give to those who ask.”
Bartimaeus’s words were simple and uncomplicated. There was no long speech, no haggling or wheedling. “I want to see” was his direct reply. And Jesus told him that his faith had healed him. Rightly, this blind man knew that Jesus would not turn away from the cry of the poor. Just think of what he did: he threw aside his old cloak, got up, and ran to Jesus. The old cloak may be a symbol for his past, his darkness, his despair. He made an act of hope-filled faith, and Jesus did not disappoint him. All attempts of the bystanders to silence him made him more determined. He was clear about what he wanted, and knew who could help him. That’s why Bartimaeus has a lesson for us all, here and now.
What the blind man heard
A blind man was invited to attend a wedding. The young couple were being married in a village church well known for its architecture and its beautiful grounds. The guests were commenting on all of this at the reception afterwards and how they were struck by how well the church, the grounds and the setting all looked. When the blind man heard all this he thought to himself, ‘But didn’t they hear the bell?’ For him, the church bell that pealed to welcome the bride and groom had been magnificent. The air was filled with its vibrating jubilation. He was amazed at the atmosphere of joy and celebration the bell had created for the occasion. Everyone else seemed to have missed that element. Although he could not see, perhaps because he could not see, his hearing was very alert. He heard the beauty that others missed. The sounds that passed others by touched him very deeply.
Today’s gospel is the story of a blind man, a blind beggar. Although he was blind, his hearing was very sensitive, so he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. Although he could not see Jesus, he made contact with him through his sense of hearing. His finely tuned hearing to the presence of Jesus led him to using another sense to make contact with Jesus, his sense of speech. He cried out, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me.’ Even when people around Jesus, including perhaps some of Jesus’ disciples, told him to keep quiet, he shouted all the louder, ‘Son of David, have pity on me.’ Even though he could not see Jesus, he was determined to make contact with him through his gift of speech, through his urgent prayer from his heart. His prayer was an act of faith on his part. He recognized Jesus as ‘Son of David’ which was one of the titles for the Messiah, and trusting that Jesus could heal his blindness. His making contact through his hearing and his speaking revealed that he had an inner sight. Even though he was blind, he saw Jesus with the eyes of faith. Even when he was rebuked by the crowd for confessing his faith out loud, he refused to be silenced. He had the courage to keep professing his faith, in spite of the hostility and scorn it brought upon him. This man’s courage faith and the quality of hearing, and speaking and seeing it gave rise to may have something to teach us when professing our faith publicly can invite scorn.
This man’s faith literally brought Jesus to a standstill, in spite of the fact that at this point in his ministry he was hurrying from Jericho to Jerusalem. The gospel says simply, ‘Jesus stopped.’ Jesus’ response to the heartfelt prayers of this man was in complete contrast to that of the people around him. Rather than telling him to keep quiet, Jesus told those around him to call him over. Jesus is portrayed as the champion of those not considered worthy enough to come near to God. Again we witness the extraordinary responsiveness of this man to Jesus’ presence, to the call of Jesus. When he heard that Jesus was calling him, he first of all threw off his cloak. His cloak, no doubt, served many purposes. He sheltered him from the weather; it was his bed; it was in a sense his home. Yet, he abandoned it, and having done so, he jumped up and went unerringly to Jesus in his blindness. Nothing was going to hold him back from connecting with Jesus, not even his precious cloak. He speaks to all of us of our own need to free ourselves of the binds that stifle our faith and keep us from approaching the Lord.
The question that Jesus asked that man when they came face to face was not the kind of dismissive question that comes from annoyance at being interrupted, ‘What do you want?’ Rather, it was a very personal question ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ It is a question that we can all hear as addressed to each of us personally, and how we answer that question can reveal a great deal about who we are and what we value. In the passage in Mark’s gospel which immediately preceded this one, Jesus asked that same question of two of his own disciples, James and John, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ Their answer revealed a self-cantered ambition, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory?’ The blind man’s answer to Jesus’ question revealed a very different heart. Aware of his blindness, aware of his disability, he asked simply, ‘Master, let me see again.’ In answering his prayer, Jesus addressed him as a man of faith, ‘your faith has saved you.’ He was already seeing Jesus with the eyes of faith before he received back his physical sight. Once he received back his physical sight, we are told that he followed Jesus along the road. He immediately used his newly restored sight to walk after Jesus as a disciple up to the city of Jerusalem, where Jesus would be crucified. His faith had shaped his hearing and his speaking, and now it shaped the path he would take. His faith had shaped his hearing and his speaking, and we could do worse than take this man as a model of faith in our own lives. Like him we are blind beggars who need to keep on crying out to the Lord who passes by so that we can see him more clearly and follow him more nearly.
Key Message:
Throw off your mourning cloak!!
Homily:
The takeaway from the first reading:
God gives an excellent promise to us in the first reading – When we go weeping to Him, He will send us back with consolations as a loving Father. God’s consolation always reaches us when we mourn.
If we feel that we are not experiencing consolation from God, then we may fall into any of the following categories:
1. We are running away from God’s consolation for us by repeatedly thinking about the pains of the past and reliving it with our lamentations. When we are fully focussed with self pity, we cannot enjoy the grasslands we are in.
Action plan: Stop thinking about the past.
2. We are going through a refiner’s fire because God is making us ready to be used in His ministry. Great responsibilities require great refinements too.
Action plan: Holding on to the hope – This suffering is also for God’s glory. This suffering is going to give birth to something good.
3. There is some blocking wall of sin that is obstructing us from receiving God’s consolation.
Action plan: Analyse our personal lives and ask God to show if there is any sin that is obstructing us from receiving consolation. Pray for the forgiveness of sin.
4. We are among the tiny percentage of God’s faithful who serve God by carrying His cross.
Action plan: Thanking God for the huge grace of suffering for the iniquities of His people. We still wonder how Little Therésè of the Child Jesus loved to suffer. Let us also plead God to give us the grace to love suffering.
God always rains His consolation when we mourn.
The takeaway from the second reading:
God appointed His own Son as His high priest forever. This was also one among the earthly designations that God our Father gave to His Son our loving Lord Jesus Christ.
Since Jesus, our current high priest, lived as a human, He is able to understand our weakness. He never reproached anyone who came to Him seeking forgiveness for sins or for any kind of blessings. He never questioned them, “Why did you commit so many sins?” or “See, how many people have you made suffer?” or “What kind of evil thoughts do you have?” He never revealed their sinful past, even though it was visible to Him. Whenever He cured saying “your sins are forgiven”, He did not publish their sins. He was only wishing them to be saved.
Though the life of Zaccheus was covered with sin, his longing heart for Jesus attracted Jesus. Jesus saw the longing heart of Zaccheus to be saved and called him. Jesus Himself told that He would come to the house of Zaccheus and dine with him.
Our Lord Jesus Christ longs for a longing heart even though it may be covered by a multitude of sins.
The takeaway from the Gospel reading:
The story of Bartimaeus has many good examples for us to love. The persistence in asking, the boldness to ask, unmindful of the struggles that tend to suppress us, clarity of mind, simplicity, child-like faith and so on and on.
But there was one question – What does “throwing off the cloak” mean?
“Throw off the cloak” means to throw off your mourning cloak and live excited for all the graces God has bestowed on you.
Are you mourning because of your sins?
God gave His only son Jesus to suffer on the cross and die to forgive our sins while we are on earth. No only to get an entry pass to Heaven. Our Father did not want us to suffer because of our sins. He wants us to be freed from all our sins.
Are you mourning because of your struggles?
When Bartimaeus threw his cloak, he was still blind. He just heard that Jesus is calling him. That same Jesus is calling each one of us. He wants us to throw off our mourning and come to Him. He is our loving Brother. He does not want to see us clothed with the cloak of mourning. Testimony: Today I was talking to elderly retired parents whose daughter had a divorce. The parents are serving in the church choir and in other activities. Almost all of their wake time they are doing some or other task for the church. Everyone in the parish likes them. They were not able to mourn for their daughter’s life because they had huge faith that Jesus would perfect everything in their daughter’s life. They strongly believe “God makes plans to prosper us”.
People who suffer immensely with belief in God are much happier than people who have less struggles with no trust in God.
When Jesus walked through the street where Bartimaeus had been begging, he kept shouting and calling Jesus. But others sternly ordered him to be quiet.
This happens in our lives also. When we start pleading with our loving Lord Jesus, the devil will try to bring some hindrances, so that we will lose our hope. There may be an increase in our problems too. But we need to keep calling to our Lord Jesus without losing hope. In the Gospel reading, it is very clearly written, when they ordered him to be quiet, all the more he shouted loudly. So the more problems come upon us, the more critics we face, we should keep calling our Lord Jesus more and more persistently. Surely our Lord Jesus will hear our plea.
The most amusing thing is Jesus, asking Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus would have surely understood that Bartimaeus wanted to see. But still, Jesus put forth that question. Why?
The answer is in Luke 11:9 – “Ask, and it shall be given you”. Luke 11:9-13 explains it also. Jesus wants us to ask Him.
Generally, we tend to lose our hope after a few iterations of asking. Once we lose our hope, we will stop actively asking for it. This is what the devil wants. Like Bartimaeus, we should hold on to our hope and persist in our asking.
Jesus wants us to ask. He likes us to enjoy the relationship of children asking Him whatever they need. When we do not know what to ask, He will surprise us like He surprised Zaccheus. But when we know what to ask, He will want us to ask and receive from Him like a little child.
When our children come to us, do we wish to send them away empty-handed? Like that, our Almighty Father has plenty of beautiful blessings in His hand and wants to bless us. He will not send us away empty-handed.
Tips for implementing the Takeaways:
1. Are there problems in our lives that do not have a solution? God can solve all problems. No problem is too big for our Jesus to solve. Was there any problem Jesus was not able to solve when He sojourned on the earth? The only place where He was not able to do any miracle was His own hometown. The only reason behind it was people did not have faith in Him. They considered Him as a mere human being, not as the Son of Almighty God. So whatever may be the problems in our lives, if we have faith in Jesus, our Lord Jesus Christ will solve the problem.
2. Jesus is interested in all the activities of our day. Since He is always with us and within us, we can talk with Him any time. We can ask His help for the little activities of our day. If we are going ahead to a meeting or writing a simple mailer or cleaning our place, whatever it may be, we can ask Him to bless the activity. Jesus is not only for big and spiritual things, He wants to be part of our daily life.
3. Our Lord Jesus Christ, our high priest understands our weakness. Every Lenten season or January 1st, Christians take good oaths, like being patient, having self-control over some activity, not shouting at others, not getting easily angry, reading the bible daily, praying the rosary or divine mercy novena or something of that kind. But when two or three weeks pass by they get discouraged by the number of times they have missed doing it or following the principle. But even when taking our oaths, our Lord Jesus will know that we will have weaknesses and will miss many times. We may not have self-control all the time, we will not keep anger under our control always. We can ensure that the number of successes is greater than the number of failures in our endeavours. The only thing our Lord Jesus is expecting us to do is – not give up.
4. Let us not have self pity, regretting our past mistakes and so on. For things that are not in our control, let us live with a carefree attitude since Jesus cares for us. Our Jesus will take care of us.
Like Bartimaeus, let us throw off our cloak of mourning. Our Lord Jesus will clothe us with a cloak of gladness!!
The closest we come to Jesus as a human being is the Gospel of Mark — quoted a few times in Pope Francis’s DILEXIT NOS as illustrating the loving heart of Jesus in word and action. He uses his spittle to heal a deaf-mute and blind man (with whom he has to try twice!) and he responds to Bartimaeus with a very human question: “What can I do for you?”, the same that a good woman I know used to ask of beggars. He takes no credit for the cure but ascribes it to the recipient’s faith.
We get some insights into Jesus’ sensations and feelings in this Gospel that disappear in the others, confirming everything Pope Francis quotes from the Fathers about Christ assuming not just our human flesh but our affections and passions.
Francis ingeniously proposes the Heart as the antidote for a heartless age of AI and mobile phones, etc., quoting Dostoevsky’s Stavrogin as an example of a heartless man and bringing in Martin Heidegger. But the gallery of saints he calls up, with their visions and their experiences of being flooded with divine fire, may not cut it today. 60 years ago we were still buoyed up by the devotional revolution of the late 19th century and hymns to the Sacred Heart (along with the 12 promises to St Margaret Mary Alacoque and the Nine First Fridays), but all that is forgotten now.
I note that he quotes his favourite theologian, Romano Guardini (1885-1968), author of deep and brilliant books on the Pope’s favoured writers: Dante, Pascal, Hölderlin, Dostoevsky, Rilke. It seems that the process for Guardini’s Canonization is underfoot — perhaps due to Francis pushing it?
Some striking paragraphs:
17. At the same time, the heart makes all authentic bonding possible, since a relationship not shaped by the heart is incapable of overcoming the fragmentation caused by individualism. Two monads may approach one another, but they will never truly connect. A society dominated by narcissism and self-centredness will increasingly become “heartless”. This will lead in turn to the “loss of desire”, since as other persons disappear from the horizon we find ourselves trapped within walls of our own making, no longer capable of healthy relationships. [Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han] As a result, we also become incapable of openness to God. As Heidegger puts it, to be open to the divine we need to build a “guest house”.
218. In a world where everything is bought and sold, people’s sense of their worth appears increasingly to depend on what they can accumulate with the power of money. We are constantly being pushed to keep buying, consuming and distracting ourselves, held captive to a demeaning system that prevents us from looking beyond our immediate and petty needs. The love of Christ has no place in this perverse mechanism, yet only that love can set us free from a mad pursuit that no longer has room for a gratuitous love. Christ’s love can give a heart to our world and revive love wherever we think that the ability to love has been definitively lost.