October 28^th 2018. Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

GOSPEL Mark 10:46-52

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading . . .

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GOSPEL Mark 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.

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . In Sunday’s Gospel the blind man, Bartimaeus, calls out insistently, “Jesus son of David, have mercy on me!” Prayer demands perseverance and resolve on our parts. But what is it that makes us persevere? When we are aware of our poverty and our desperation, then we call out most strongly to the Lord! Our weakness and our neediness is the powerhouse of our prayer! The people tell Bartimaeus to shut up. In my life too there are many forces that tell me to shut up, who insist that I desist from praying. The three classic enemies of prayer are the world, the flesh and the devil. The world tells me to solve my own problems with direct action, not with submission to the Lord. The flesh with its passions and impulses is not disposed to prayer. It makes me lazy and wilful, distracts me with other things. The devil tells me that God does not listen to my prayer so why bother? He tells me that I am of no importance before the Lord. All of these forces dissuade me from praying, but they demonstrate how important prayer truly is! In response to these negative voices I must become like Bartimaeus and cry to the Lord all the louder. Bartimaeus casts away his cloak and turns with insistence to Jesus. We too must cast away our “cloaks”, the things that conceal who we really are, the roles and expectations that we have. We must place ourselves before the Lord so that our prayer becomes a meeting of two desires, the desire of my heart and the desire of the Lord for my good. But how can I be sure that my prayer will be an expression of what is true and essential in my heart? If I persevere in prayer, then the combat of perseverance will purify my prayer so that it becomes a sincere expression of who I am before God and of my deepest needs. Then we can expect Jesus to reply, as he did to Bartimaeus, “Go, your faith has saved you!”

Prayer demands perseverance and resolution. It is our very poverty that impels us to pray with fervour and with persistence!

On this thirtieth Sunday of the year, we read a passage of the Gospel which is a very important inspiration for the prayer and liturgy of the Orthodox church. A blind man calls out repeatedly, “Son of David, have pity on me!” Through reflection on this passage, we can celebrate the gift of our dialogue with God in the liturgy, the spinal column of our Christian lives. The story of Bartimaeus highlights that prayer involves a struggle of perseverance, an entering into combat. Just like this blind man, there is a sense in which we are all stopped at a point along the street, unable to go any further and in great need. The power of prayer derives from our very poverty! Our emptiness, our anguish, makes us turn towards God with sincerity. We should not conceal our desperation but make it the powerhouse of our pleading before God.

Just as the people told Bartimaeus to shut up, so too there are many forces that try to quieten our prayers

Many people tell Bartimaeus to be quiet. Similarly, there are many forces that dissuade us from turning towards the Lord. The three historic enemies are the world, the flesh and the devil. The attitude of the world is to say, “Why bother praying? Resolve your problems yourself! Get to work and do something concrete!” The flesh with its passions and impulses causes confusion and distracts us from prayer. “I don’t feel like praying just now. I think I’ll have something to eat first. That phone call needs to be made without delay. No, my mood is not right at this moment.” And then there is the devil who speaks critically of God. He either tells us that God does not bother to listen to someone as unworthy as me, or he tells me to go ahead and resolve my problems myself. All of these voices together seek to dissuade us from prayer. But we must persevere. The quality of our prayer is not always up to us, but the quantity is under our control. We must persist, we must enter into this good fight. At the moment when we have the most doubts rising in our hearts, that is the very time to pray most serenely. It is the moment we can be sure that something is trying to oppose us, and therefore we must cry out all the louder by the power of our very poverty.

In prayer, we must cast away all our masks and expectations. We must welcome the grace that is at our doorstep, and then we must speak plainly to the Lord, telling him our hearts’ desires

Jesus stops when he hears the cries of Bartimaeus. The blind man casts away his cloak. The cloak was an inalienable right in the jurisprudence of ancient Israel, and it was also a symbol of the role a person had in society. Bartimaeus throws all of this away, his way of existing, his explanations, his scheme of operating. In prayer, we must abandon everything we think of ourselves, our expectations, our fixations, the way we construct the realities of life. Instead, we must become aware that grace is at our doorstep, casting away the veils that we place over things, the schemes that we seek to fit life into. Then, when we place ourselves close to Jesus, we will hear him say, as he said to the blind man, “What do you want me to do for you?” The catechism of the Church tells us that prayer is the encounter between two desires, what we desire and what God desires. We must have the courage to ask whatever it is that we need to ask.

How can we be sure that in prayer we will express to the Lord what is important in our hearts? Because, if we have persevered, then our prayer will have been purified by the struggle, by the renunciation of our masks and cloaks. The prayer that emerges will be a true meeting of hearts with the Lord. And he will reply, “Go, your faith has saved you!”

We can be confident that our prayer will have been purified by our perseverance, our persistence, our struggle and by the renunciation of our “cloaks”. And the prayer that emerges will be that which we truly desire. In response Jesus says, “Go, your faith has saved you.” In the combat of prayer, we arrive at the moment of grace. In this moment of grace we see our small but absolutely essential role - the act of abandoning ourselves in faith to God. Bartimaeus in his prayer refers to Jesus as the son of David. This is an expression of his Hebrew faith in the coming of the Messiah. His persistent prayer is a demonstration of this faith. He knows that Jesus is capable of giving him the great gift of the light. And he immediately has his sight restored and follows Jesus along the road. The former blind man uses his newly restored vision to keep the Lord in sight, to see where he goes, and to follow him.