The healing miracles of Jesus can be read at differing levels. On the one hand, they are always signs of compassion and the desire that individuals should be released from whatever is limiting their lives. The Catechism reminds us that Jesus loved with a fully human heart, and the events recorded by St Mark in the Gospel we have just heard are an expression of that love as blind Bartimaeus makes his act of faith and receives its reward. "Son of David; have pity on me … Master let me see again”.
But, as the Gospel writers make very clear, the One who gives sight to Bartimaeus is the fulfiller of the ancient prophecies: “then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unsealed, then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongues of the dumb shall sing for joy”. The healing miracles are acts of charity, but they are also effective signs – for those prepared to recognise them – as to the true identity of Jesus as God’s Son, Israel’s Messiah.
St Mark tells us that “immediately his sight returned, he followed him along the road”. In other words, what has happened here on the road from Jericho is far more than just the immediate solution to a specific problem – that of physical blindness – it is a life-changing experience which involves a decision to become a disciple. “Follow me”, says Jesus: he who walks in the dark does not know where he is going … believe in the light and you will become sons of light" (Jn 12:26).
Pope Benedict has written about the blindness which afflicts so many people in what he describes as the contemporary wilderness. Blindness of course can take many forms. It can be physical: there are many in today’s world - our brothers and sisters - who go hungry and thirsty, who do not have the basic requirements for education and health care. That is a scandal. But, as Jesus demonstrated with Bartimaeus, there is a blindness of the sprit which needs addressing also. It is the whole person that needs healing, and that involves more than the alleviation of external symptoms. Souls, as well as bodies, need nourishment, and, the fact that so few around us today are awakened to the things of God, is a real scandal, too. The blindness of unbelief may not be identifiable as a medical condition, but its effects can be as limiting and damaging as if it were.
Our second reading – from the Letter to the Hebrews that great treatise on the priesthood of Christ – talks of the humanity of the Saviour, and of how there is understanding of, and sympathy with, our condition because Jesus was prepared to take upon himself what Scripture terms the “limitations of weakness”. The Incarnation, which takes us to the very foundation of Christian belief, means that we are understood from within – that the God in whom we believe, who reveals himself in Christ, the perfect copy of the divine nature, feels for us with a human heart. There is nothing which we can experience which does not have resonance already within the Godhead. There is no pain which you and I can feel, no sense of isolation or emptiness, no search for identity and meaning, no anxiety, no fear, which has not been absorbed into the humanity of Christ. That is our faith. That is our hope. And it does make all the difference.
Jeremiah, in our first reading, has words of reassurance for a people in exile. “The blind and the lame - a great company returning - they had left in tears. I will comfort them as I lead them back. I will guide them to streams of water”. The prophecies are fulfilled. Christ comes to lead us home to the Father: he is the One who tries, quite literally, “to bring good news to the poor, to bind up hearts that are broken, to proclaim liberty to captives, to comfort those who mourn, and live in the shadow of death”. (Is 61:2)
But the problem for the Church, as for the world, is whether we allow Christ to speak- whether we are genuinely open to hear his word of healing. Do we want to remain in the darkness, or to emerge into the light? Do we want to see clearly? Bartimaeus begged that his life should change – and it did. Perhaps this is the raison d’etre for our parish here in Spanish Place. These doors open every day, all day, to all comers. An invitation offered. And within, the beauty of holiness, a building redolent of the things of God – a gate into heaven – manna in the wilderness, a beacon of light. We have been given great gifts - let us cherish them – let us never take them for granted. Let us do everything we can to share what we have with those around us. “Master, let me see … Go, your faith has saved you”.
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