This Weekend our Gospel reading is all about Blindness or should I say spiritual blindness as all of us can be blind to the call that god gives us. In our Gospel story Christ walks along the streets of the ancient city of Jericho and even at the time of Jesus Jericho was a very old city. With his disciples and a great crowd following him, our Lord is leaving the city and Bartimaeus the blind beggar calls out to him in dire need: “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me.” Bartimaeus, though blind, could see. His instincts were sharper than a fresh razor blade. The divinity of Jesus had come across to him in waves. But those around and about him, who enjoyed good vision, were blind to the Son of Man Helen Keller who was blind and deaf said, “The most beautiful things in the world can’t be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.” It is possible for good people to spend their days searching but never finding their spiritual hearts. Spiritual blindness often prevents people from perceiving the correct way a follower of Jesus should live. Our following of Jesus is not compulsory but it has more value than I can say.
We are not compelled to love or to accept the mission of God to transform the world after the pattern that Jesus gave us that is our own free choice and it is a good choice to make for our lives. We must not accept the voices that would have us silenced and there are so many in our modern world and many of those voices are blind to the Spiritual heart of faith. The gift we seek is sight, that is the ability to capture the vision of a new creation brought about by a faith filled community of people both those around us and those who by their lives have shown us the road to take. Our reflection on the lives of those who have gone before us tell us that the way of discipleship can lead us into paths we may find difficult The disciples, on the road with Jesus, must have thought of themselves as part of the “in crowd,” the way James and John did when they asked Jesus to give them seats of power in his kingdom in last Sundays Gospel. While they were physically close to Jesus, they were a long way from understanding and taking his message on board. The blind beggar, with nothing but a cloak, was exactly the kind of person Jesus noticed and invited to come close while those with Jesus still didn’t get it and as a result they were not his true followers on “the way.”
God wants us to say in the silence of our hearts, “Lord that I may see.” Jesus wants our prayer like that of Bartimaeus to come from a sincere heart that asks not only for the gift of sight so that we can see the world around us, but also for the gift of seeing – of seeing the truth, or the lack of it in the depths of our being, and then taking the action necessary to reverse our blindness. Bartimaeus saw Christ with the eyes of faith and a faith filled heart. So we must look and see Jesus with the eyes of faith so that we may be able to see more clearly what we have to do as people of faith to lead others to Jesus.
Fullerton T 