Gospel Meditation - 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Near my house there is a school for the blind. Often, I see blind people learning how to navigate the world with only a walking stick, even on a busy street with roaring traffic. I’m amazed to see how adept and carefully they get around without sight. Nevertheless, often a sadness arises in me that he or she cannot see all the beautiful colors, images, and persons filling the world around them. Those days, I find myself deeply grateful for the basic privilege of sight. That’s part of why the mystery of Jesus as the sight-giver is so moving to me. This week, it’s wonderful how Bartimaeus the blind man is no longer content with his limitation and bellows out his desire for Jesus’ mercy. In beautiful simplicity, he cries out to the Lord, “Master, let me receive my sight.” Jesus quietly heals his sight. And off he goes, fully taking in the world around him. Imagine the delightful new way in which he is able to respond to the world. Like blind Bartimaeus and the courageous people in my neighborhood, we may be able to get around reasonably well in our daily lives. But we are blind to the gestures of heroic love of people close to us. We can’t see the desperate need of the hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, exploited, endangered, and so on, in our midst. We can’t see Jesus drawing near to us in so many ways, but he is. This Sunday let’s cry out to him: Lord have mercy on me! I want to see! And little by little — or perhaps in a flash — we’ll see once again, or perhaps for the first time.
— Father John Muir ©LPI
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