May Jesus Christ be praised and may his holy Mother pray for
us.
Today in the Gospel we hear some of the most comforting words
ever spoken: Take courage, get up, Jesus
is calling you. What comfort these
words must have brought to the blind Bartimaeus; Take courage, get up Jesus is calling you. Having lived for years in physical darkness,
living his life on the side of the road and separated from society, Bartimaeus
was personally called by Jesus. These
were indeed words of comfort.
This was the same consolation and compassion that the Lord
promised to the Israelites during their exile in Babylon. Today in the reading from the prophet
Jeremiah we hear of the promise of the Lord to bring his people back from exile
to the Promised Land. Behold I will bring them back from the land
of the north; I will gather them from the ends of the earth. This promise of the Lord, however, was not
made only to the powerful and the strong. The Lord promised that his chosen people
would return with the blind and the lame,
with mothers and those with child.
The return from exile would not leave anyone behind, because the love
and compassion of God extends beyond the lines of society and beyond the edges
of the road.
It is the same compassion, recounted in the Letter to the
Hebrews, which is to be exercised by the High Priest. He is
able to deal patiently with the ignorant and the erring, for he himself is beset
by weakness. The High Priest
exercises his ministry with a compassionate heart, always conscious of his own
weakness and limitations. Christ our
High Priest, whose Sacred Heart burns with compassion, desires the same
compassion from those who exercise his sacred priesthood and from his holy
people. The compassion that Christ our
Savior commands us to show, the people of the world deserve to receive from us
who bear the name of Christian. The Lord
Jesus calls us to share his compassion and to seek out those on the sides of
the roads, the blind, the lame and the exiles, and proclaim to them: Take courage, get up, Jesus is calling you.
However, dear brothers and sisters, we cannot give what we
have not first received. And we will not
be able to share the love and compassion of Christ if we have not first
encountered them. Each of us, in one way
or another, is afflicted by blindness.
Each of us can find ourselves on the side of the road, calling for help
and being pushed away by the crowd as we saw in the Gospel.
The people in the crowd rebuked Bartimaeus and told him to be
silent. They wanted Bartimaeus to leave
them alone in their comfortable world where they would not have to see
him. The response of the Lord Jesus to
the plea of Bartimaeus was different.
Jesus sent them to call him. The
response of Bartimaeus was immediate. He
throws aside his cloak, he leaps up, and he comes to Jesus. This, my brothers and sisters, is no ordinary
activity. This is the pattern and the
language of resurrection. This is the
calling to life in the kingdom. Just as
Bartimaeus would leave his cloak on the side of the road and be raised up by
the call of Christ, so Christ Jesus would leave behind the shroud that covered
his lifeless body in the tomb that could not hold him bound. Bartimaeus left behind what made him
comfortable on the margins so that he could embrace the call to life with
Jesus. And upon encountering the Lord,
Bartimaeus heard those words: What do you
want me to do for you? Called from
the side of the road by the same crowd that had pushed him away, now face to
face with the Son of God, Bartimaeus replied, Master, I want to see. The
Lord Jesus, giving him sight, said, Go
your way; your faith has saved you.
And Bartimaeus followed Jesus on the way. Bartimaeus used his new gift of sight to keep
his eyes fixed on following the Lord Jesus.
The Lord Jesus had called him to himself, healed him of his affliction,
and sent him as a witness to the great things that the Lord had done.
For each of us, in the celebration of the Eucharist, the Lord
does the same thing. Called through our
Baptism to participate in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, we come to the
Altar of God. Wherever we are, in the
crowd or on the margins, the Lord Jesus is calling us closer to himself. He is calling us to a fuller life in the
Kingdom. We proclaim as the Host and
Chalice are raised: Lord I am not worthy that
you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be
healed. There we respond in faith to
the Lord’s question: What do you want me
to do for you? Invited by the Lord
we reveal our afflictions to the Lord for his healing touch. And strengthened by the Lord’s Precious Body
and Blood, and seeing the world with the eyes of faith, we can say to those we
encounter as we journey on the road, Take
courage, get up, Jesus is calling you.
Preached at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic
Church, Monroe, NC
