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The name
“Bartimaeus” means “son of an honored man” (or, more commonly, the son
of a respected, leading citizen). The presence of this particular name
in today’s gospel presents an ironic twist because no one honored
Bartimaeus, not his family, relatives, and kinsfolk or his fellow
citizens. Bartimaeus was not at all honored as was his father, Timaeus.
Born blind, these
people knew Bartimaeus to be a sinner and the proof was that Bartimaeus
had inherited his disability because someone in his family or lineage
had died without repenting for his (or her) sin. “No sin goes
unpunished and divine justice will be done,” the people reasoned based
upon the prevailing theology of the day. “So, God has chosen Bartimaeus
to bear this burden and to pay the price.” Hence, these people
believed, God destined Bartimaeus to be the scapegoat, that is, to spend
his life atoning for the sin committed by someone Bartimaeus never knew
or would ever know. Shunned by his family, relatives, kinsfolk, and
fellow citizens alike, Bartimaeus spent his days begging for alms in the
hope that passersby would toss a few measly coins his way. Then,
Bartimaeus could procure some food.
Condemned to live
in physical and spiritual darkness, Bartimaeus had few earthly
possessions. Yes, there were the clothes on his back. Yes, there also
was his cloak which Bartimaeus spread out on the roadside where he sat
and begged. It provided a target at which people could pitch a few
measly coins during the day and which Bartimaeus could easily gather up
to collect the few coins tossed his way by people who pitied him. The
cloak also provided Bartimaeus a blanket in the cold of the night.
The story of
Bartimaeus, however, isn’t a sob story about a dishonored and destitute
man. No, it is a powerful story of faith and the power of faith to heal
the wages of sin. Bartimaeus is not to be pitied but to be
emulated because he asked Jesus for what he needed—to see—whereas the
ones who pitied Bartimaeus are the ones to be pitied. Their
blindness made it impossible for them to see Jesus for who he truly was.
One day, as Jesus
was walking through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem to celebrate the
feast of the Passover, he heard an anonymous voice from somewhere in the
back of the crowd crying out: “Son of David, have pity on me.”
“Shut up,” the
crowd responded as they pushed en masse toward Jesus.
Not allowing the
others to silence him, Bartimaeus cried out all the louder, “Jesus, Son
of David, have pity on me.”
Hearing the man’s
pleas, Jesus called Bartimaeus—the sinner—to him, not any of the people
in the crowd.
Leaving behind
his only worldly possessions other than the clothes on his back,
Bartimaeus ran in the direction of the voice beckoning him. Making his
way to Jesus, Bartimaeus begged not for a few measly coins so that he
could procure some food but for something more precious—God’s
forgiveness—that would make it possible for Bartimaeus to see.
“Your faith has
saved you, Jesus told Bartimaeus.
In the flash of
an instant, Bartimaeus could see. Interestingly, he didn’t retreat back
to his place on the roadside to reclaim his blanket and coins. Nor did
Bartimaeus cower behind the crowd. Instead, Bartimaeus joined Jesus and
his disciples on the way—leaving everything behind characterizing his
former way of life, and symbolized in his cloak to follow the way, the
truth, and the life that is Christ.
While the story
of Bartimaeus affirms the power of faith to heal the wages of sin, for
all of the people in the crowd—and for us, too—this is an important
story teaching about the spiritual blindness caused by personal sin as
well as our need for spiritual healing.
The crowd of
“somebodies”—who desperately wanted to be near Jesus—shunned the man
they viewed as a “nobody,” a sinner. Pushing Bartimaeus behind them,
the goal was to make themselves visible to Jesus and to make the sinner
invisible. “Shut up, Bartimaeus, go back to where you belong,” they
shouted as they pushed him further behind. However, these
self-important “somebodies” were really unimportant “nobodies,” people
who—though they could see—were, in reality, blind…to the sin which had
made them blind.
There are so many
ways in which we are blind due to sin, spiritually speaking, especially
when we give ourselves permission to push other people aside, to crowd
in front of them, and to promote ourselves, believing that we are the
“saved” while all of those others are such awful “sinners.” Ironically,
our blindness—evident in our self-chosen pride and need for healing—is
visible to everyone but to us.
Take, for
example, closed-mindedness. Oftentimes, we persist in believing
that we and only we are correct about whatever the issue may be.
Politics, religion, family matters, relatives, and even a son’s or
daughter’s choice of dates or mate. In doing so, we allow arrogance to
blind us to the truth of our closed-mindedness. “Everybody else is
wrong. I am right!” we stubbornly protest. Yet, our blindness is
evident to everybody else. It’s the “stubborn old coot” syndrome.
We also build
walls around ourselves to keep out all of those people whom we believe
are so inferior and not worthy of either our attention or our care.
Just like those “gated communities” springing up across the nation, we
erect walls around ourselves to keep from ever having to interact with
what we believe but, of course, would never call “riff raff” or, worse
yet, “human debris.” In so doing, our self-isolation blinds us
to others and their needs. Yet, our poverty is obvious for all to see.
It’s called “loneliness.”
Our flight into
consumerism exhibits another form of blindness. We surround
ourselves with toys and trinkets that give only momentary and fleeting
pleasure. Increasingly, we become blind to the fact that we’ve enslaved
ourselves to the vicious cycle where we desire more and more, yet we
remain ignorant of the fact that we’re finding less and less that
satisfies our exponentially increasing selfish desires. Yet, to others,
our blindness is so obvious…we’re impatient, restless, so easily upset,
and so needy as we blindly seek more and more happiness in all the wrong
places.
Then, there’s our
bigotedness. (I don’t know if that’s a word, but it sure sounds
right.) Teenagers are especially familiar with this form of blindness.
What is it? We write instant messages (“IM’s” they’re called) to other
people in which we express our private opinions concerning third
parties. In these IMs, we detail matters that have very little to do
with how God sees those people but, instead, how we and our peer group
or clique have prejudged those people. Our blindness is so obvious.
How? In our prejudice. Just consider how ashamed we become when we
find out one of our IMs has been forwarded with our name and email
address on it to the third party!
All of these
shelf-chosen sins comes at a very high price, namely, blindness. These
sins cause us to live in darkness and, while we believe everybody else
needs healing, it’s we who desperately need healing! Unlike
Bartimaeus, however—whom the crowd forced into the background—these
self-chosen sins don’t force us into the background. No, they mislead
us as we amble along winding detours that take us farther and farther
away from our true destination on the road of faith. What we need is to
get back on the road of faith. Of course, that’s more easily said than
done because sin has blinded us to the facts about where we are, how we
got there, and what we need to do if we are ever to get back on the road
of faith.
In our blindness,
most of us have more to lose than Bartimaeus did when he encountered
Jesus. He had only his cloak and a few coins to leave behind. Among
the many things we must leave behind to get back on the road of faith
include, among others: arrogance and pride; the belief that we alone
know what’s best for us; considerable material possessions; the
conviction that we alone control our destiny, the belief that we are the
sole source of our security, and that we have the right to judge anybody
and everybody by our personal standards. To be healed of our blindness,
we must leave everything behind—save the clothes we are wearing—and say,
“Son of David, have pity on me, a sinner.”
This past
Thursday evening, I received a call from my Mom. She was in one of what
I call her “post-reflective, more inquisitive moods,” asking me all
sorts of questions about all sorts of disjointed theological matters.
Somewhere during her interrogation, she asked: “Why don’t people go to
Confession any more?” The question came as a shot out of the dark and I
wasn’t quite sure what my Mom was getting at, so I asked: “What do you
mean?” “Well,” she said, “it used to be that Confession was held in
Saturday mornings from 9:00 until 10:00 or 10:30 and on Saturday
afternoons from 3:00 until 5:00 or 5:30. There was always a pretty
steady stream of people going to Confession. Now, Confession is
scheduled only on Saturday afternoon and only from 4:30 until 5:00.”
Now, the truth be
told, my Mom’s observation is absolutely correct. In many—probably
most—parishes throughout the United States, thirty minutes per week may
be way too much time to schedule for Confessions. Judging by the number
of people who actually do go to Confession, it seems that most weeks
there’s no need to schedule time for people to go to Confession.
What is it that
makes so many of us blind to what the Sacrament of Penance really is and
offers us so that we don’t avail ourselves of the gift this sacrament
truly is by saying to the priest, “Son of David, have pity on me, a
sinner”? After all, as the Letter to the Hebrews reminded us:
Every high priest is
taken from among men and made their representative before God, to offer
gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal patiently with the
ignorant and erring, for he himself is beset by weakness and so, for
this reason, must make sin offerings for himself as well as for the
people. No one takes this honor upon himself but only when called by
God….
How can a priest
make sin offerings for the people if the people are not confessing to
the priest the sins for which he must make an offering to God?
Perhaps so many
Catholics are reticent to participate in the Sacrament of Penance
because it requires that experiencing “a radical reorientation of our
whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart, an end of
sin, a turning away from evil, with repugnance toward the evil actions
we have committed” (#1431). If, by our free choices, we have allowed
sin to make us so blind that we actually believe what we’re doing is
right when it’s obvious to anyone who is not blind how truly bad what
we’re doing is, what need do we have to make that radical reorientation
or conversion to God with all our heart? “I don’t need the sacrament,”
we tell ourselves and anyone else who is willing to listen.
Yet, the wages of
sin is that it makes our hearts heavy and burdened. Sin not only has
these spiritual effects but also physical effects. Sin causes us to
lose sleep, to fret and worry unduly, as well as increased stress and
useless anxiety. Sin causes us to become “eccentric,” that is, “off
center” in such ways that we grow increasingly less normal, all the
while believing of course that this is normal. That’s how sin blinds us
to the truth and, especially, the truth of who we’ve become. We don’t
believe it but we’re actually not living the life God has given to us.
No, we’re living something we believe is life but actually is a
self-chosen “night of the living dead.”
Only God can give
us a new heart and recreate us so that we can begin anew, put the past
in the past, and look ahead to the future where there is no noose around
our necks anchoring us to who we were in the past. For our part, all we
have to do is to hope in God’s mercy and to trust in the help of God’s
grace present in the Sacrament of Penance. As the Catechism of the
Catholic Church teaches, this sacrament makes us aware of God’s
love, heals our blindness, and makes us be aware not only of how we’ve
separated ourselves from Him (#1432) but also God’s longing for us to be
one with Him.
This message
really flies in the face of what our culture teaches. What our culture
teaches is that we are to be “masters of our destiny.” Our culture also
teaches us we will accomplish anything we put our minds to. Lastly, our
culture teaches us that we are strong when we rule others.
Given what our
culture teaches us, why would any of us need to beg for God’s mercy and
grace? “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me, a sinner” is a sign of
weakness not strength.
The trouble is
that what our culture teaches us in fact makes us blind. The plain
truth is that we aren’t “masters of our destiny.” No, we are God’s
children. The plain truth is that we may be able to do many of the
things we put our minds to, but the fact is that we are mere mortals and
our lives are but a fleeting instant in time. Lastly, the plain truth
is that our strength comes not by ruling others, but through humble
obedience to God’s law. This is what makes us strong. “Jesus, Son of
David, have pity on me, a sinner” is a sign of strength not weakness.
If we are to be
healed of our spiritual blindness, we have to do as Bartimaeus did. We
need to listen as Jesus teaches the way, the truth, and the life, allow
that teaching to change our hearts, and to say—along with Bartimaeus—“Jesus,
Son of David, have pity on me, a sinner.” Moreover, when the people
crowd around Jesus and push us to the back, we need to say all the
louder, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me, a sinner.”
“Come,” Jesus
will say. And, as we move toward that voice unsure about where we are
headed because we are blind, Jesus will heal us, as he did Bartimaeus.
Then, as we leave everything of our sinful past behind—the cloaks that
provided comfort in our self-chosen torment—to follow the way, truth,
and life that is Christ, we too shall be called “Bartimaeus,” that is,
sons and daughters of the truly honored one, the Son of God himself.
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