Mark 10:36-52; 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

“As far as the eye can see” is an expression of long and wide distances. And yet it also suggests limits of our vision. Pondering the future, Karen Dinesen (Baroness Blixen) in her memoir, “Out of Africa”, writes, “Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road.”

In many ways, we are Bartimeus, the blind man in the Gospel today. We have eyes but we can only see so far. We do not see everything. And if we are not watchful, we only see what we want to see.   

Thankfully, the Gospel gives us the glasses we need. When Bartimeus is finally summoned to come near, the disciples tell the blind man, “Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you.”

Restoring our vision has something to do with those three actions then: taking courage, getting up, and listening.

First, taking courage. We do not see when we are afraid. Fear can eclipse the light of many beautiful graces, such as the light of love, and especially the light of God. When Bartimeus is told to be brave, we realize that it takes courage to believe.

We tend to think of faith as anodyne and painless, the easy refuge of the desperate. But believing in God these days demands courage. The risk of faith is not so much in enduring persecution or ridicule as in suffering the indifference of others or the silence of God. In any commitment, to trust someone, to believe even in ourselves, is itself a risk. The danger is real of being thrown by the wayside, crucified even, ignored and left for nothing.

How much more of a leap in the dark it is then to entrust our lives to God. It takes courage to raise our voice in the crowd as the blind man did. It takes nerve to overcome our pride and self-containment and turn to God. No, faith is not for the timid of heart. The opposite of faith is not doubt, it is fear.

Second, getting up. We fail to see many things when we do not get up. When Bartimeus is told to get up, we realize that our blindness will not be healed by remaining on the ground, earthbound. 

We stay blind when we do not rise from our failure or weakness. Self-pity magnifies the myopia. Not rising, we see only ourselves. The self-absorption is itself a form of blindness that traps us in a flat, two-dimensional world. In such a world, the farthest our eyes can ever see is death. We will not see the height and depth of heaven. The roundness of the earth escapes us.

And so we are told to get up and come to our senses. However tempting it is to stay put within the confines of safe and familiar ground, we get up. How else are we to see where we are going if we do not stand and start moving? How else are we to see beyond the horizon if we do not move toward it? If we are to see again, we need only rise from where we’ve fallen and come closer to God who sees us not for our failings but for who we are, begotten of his love.

Third and last, Jesus is calling you, listen. We do not see when we do not listen. Blindness is not just the loss of sight but also the loss of sound. And today it is the loss of God’s voice in our lives that leaves us fumbling in the dark.

We remain blind not because we cannot see God (who can?). Our sight is impaired because we can no longer discern God’s voice in those who are crying out to us in need. When the cry of the poor and of creation are inaudible to us, they become invisible to us. Our blindness is not of the eye but of the heart.

Restoring our vision then has to do with listening to Jesus who is always calling us. It means heeding God’s voice in those least in the eyes of the world but not in the eyes of our Lord. It will also mean recovering our voice and daring to call on God again and again with the persistence of those who know they are children of God.

Let us pray then with Bartimeus: Master, we want to see. We want to see where our lives are going, where you may be found. We want to see beyond what our eyes can see. Bless us then to get over our fears, to rise from where we’ve fallen, and to listen to you calling us now and for always. Amen.