Homily for 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center
25 October 2009
Year for Priests
St. John Vianney, pray for us!
St. Lawrence, pray for us!
Mary, Mother of Priests, pray for us!
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Bartimaus, the hero of today's Gospel story, is something none of us want to be. He is needy. He is whiny. He is a beggar. It is not cool to be any of these things. When people ask us how we are doing, they expect us to say we're doing well. They don't generally want to hear about our problems. They don't want to hear about our needs. They want to hear that we are doing just fine on our own. That we are self-sufficient. Almost all the commercials we see on tv are geared toward helping us be less needy, teaching us how to do it ourselves, and to be more self-sufficient. Our society is geared toward helping us be less like Bartimaus. How do we fix ourselves, before having to depend on others? We place incomparable value in our society on being able to support yourself. When we ask someone what they do for a living, or what they are studying in college, we immediately want to know if their job or potential job will allow them to be successfully self-sufficient, and not dependent on others. The last thing we want to tell someone we have just met is that we are broke, or unemployed, or a dropout, or unsuccessful in any way. Most of us hate to beg, and what is more, we are scared of people who are going to ask us for things. We stay away from people who are beggars, people who are needy, people who may ask from us, emotionally or materially, more than we are ready or able to give them.
Fr. Robert Barron, in his homily for this weekend, reminds us all however, that learning how to beg, and learning how to love being a beggar, is the beginning of the spiritual life. This is what makes Bartimaus the hero of today's story. He is not afraid to beg, not embarrassed to be a beggar, even when their is social pressure around him to shut up, and quit being so whiny and needy. Bartimaus is told by his peers to disappear, that he is annoying, but because of the spiritual courage of this man, he only shouts out all the louder - Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me.
In the same way, we begin every Mass by trying to assume the position of Bartimaus. We begin every Mass by calling to mind our sins. We begin by confessing our blindness, that not only do we not understand fully who we are, we do not understand where we are going or how to get there either. We are blind, insofar as knowing our vocation and how to spend our time on this earth. We begin every Mass by saying Lord, have mercy, Christ, have mercy, Lord, have mercy, practically the identical words uttered by the hero of today's Gospel. We begin our Mass by asking Jesus to heal us, and to be with us as a sure friend and guide on our journey from Jericho to Jerusalem, from sin to grace, from darkness to light, from loneliness to communion with God and with one another.
Fr. Barron, one of the greatest evangelists of our time, reminds us in his homily for this weekend, that we do not end the Mass by asking for God's mercy, but we begin Mass there. The same must be true of our spiritual life. We do not begin the spiritual life assuming that we can see clearly, and only when our sight proves to fail do we think to bother Jesus. No, we begin the spiritual life with humility, admitting the real and almost certain possibility that we do not know exactly where we are going, nor do we know the way. We must begin the spiritual life not with trying to get as far as we can by ourselves, before realizing Jesus will have to take us the rest of the way. No, quite the opposite. Jesus does not want to pick up where we leave off, but to walk with us from the very beginning of our journey. He wishes to share His vision and His light with us, making bright the path before us, as a companion and friend. Jesus is not for us a last resort, after we have tried everything else, but a first option in helping us be who we really want to be, if only we have the courage to beg his help.
In order to begin the spiritual life, then, which is nothing more than a deep and intimate friendship with God who makes Himself available to us through His Son Jesus, we willingly assume the position of a beggar. We begin Mass by asking the Lord to heal us of our blindness. We do this not because a Catholic must always begin by beating himself up, not because that is what we have been trained to do. We don't do this simply because we hate ourselves and our weaknesses. No, we do this because we know in the depths of our being that from the beginning of our lives, we are never meant to walk alone. Life is not a hard test of who can be the most self-sufficient, the least needy and the least annoying. No, quite the opposite, life is a journey that is meant to be shared with friends, most of all with Jesus, who comes to make life easier by his unique friendship which always puts us in touch with our deepest vocation to love one another as He has first loved us.
It is not an unfortunate thing to be a beggar. This is really hard to get through our thick skulls. Unless Bartimaus is a true hero and model for us, we are doomed to live our lives within the dark circle of our own self-sufficiency, a very small and lonely circle of blindness and loneliness. Bartimaus is the hero of today's story, because he has the gift that no one else around him in today's story seems to have. He has the gift of humbly knowing that he is blind, whereas everyone around him falsely thinks that they can see. When we assume the position of beggar before God, the fruit is that we are able to move from isolation to communion, both with God and with one another. If we are seeking to become more dependent upon God, not less, like Bartimaus who would not let anyone tell him to leave God alone, the result will be that others will be less annoying to us. If we are not afraid to beg, those who beg of our time or our energy or our love will not scare us or annoy us. Like Jesus, who did simply what Bartimaus asked of him, when others ask us for something, we will see them not as annoying, but as a gift, and will be able to always give them at least something of what we have first received from Christ - his mercy, his friendship, and his love.
The next time we are attempted to no-show at some event, to screen a call we know we should answer, to tell a lie in order to preserve our independence, or to shy away from relationships that have the potential to be annoying, let us remember the response of Jesus to the blind man Bartimaus. If we first have the courage to beg Christ to be with us on our journey, we will receive from Him the grace to be His light to others in the same way! +m
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