If you will here stop, and ask yourself why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you, that it is neither through ignorance nor through inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.
- William Law (1686-1761), A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (Ouch! But the Gospel does make it clear that a half-hearted response is not what Christ asks of us. How can you more fully
seek to know, love and serve God?) |
Sir 42:15-25; PS 33:2-9 Mk 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.
Reflection on the Scriptures
"I want to see!" Bartimaeus and we want to be healed so as to see the creation,
the wonders described in our first reading. There is a deeper blindness which we all share and from which we cry, "I want to see!" The wonders of the Lord we desire to touch and possess and we want to see more. Our common blind condition is seeing the presence of God in the non-wondrous, the places where the sun does not show forth the greatness of God. It is difficult to see in the dark and it is then that we cry out, "I want to see!" We will receive our sight when we can receive our truth as did this Bartimaeus. Seeing is believing? Believing for Bartimaeus is the beginning of seeing. Believing is seeing more than meets the eye. We can visually see other persons or this object or that setting and we believe we have really "seen it all". For those who are healed by their belief in Jesus, the reality of the Eucharist is simply receivable and believable, because they have been touched by His
presence within and beyond what meets the eye. With the eyes of faith we behold and hold His presence in the sacraments of the every day, the every moment and every person of those days. "you have nothing whatever to fear from Him, He is calling you.
-by Larry Gillick, S.J.
Proverbs for Perspective and Spiritual Living by Philip St. Romain, M.S., D. Min. From Pathways to Serenity, 1989, Liguori Publications; reprinted by Contemplative Ministries, Inc., 2013 (Minor editing applied.)
- https://shalomplace.com/view/pathview.html Included in Light for the Christian Journey, 2020: Contemplative Ministries, Inc.
https://shalomplace.com/view/light-journey.html
IV. The Experience of God
18. If God is experienced as an object of the self, there is the possibility that this object is merely the creation of the
self.
19. God is the force that binds together the fragments of your life into harmonious meaning and impels you to bond with others in love.
20. God is
the essential core of all that exists. To empathize with anything in creation, then, is to experience something of God.
21. “Where is the ocean?” asks the fish. “Where is God?” inquires the intellectual. (Adapted from a proverb by Anthony de Mello.)
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