1st Reading: Jas 1:19-27
Gospel: Mk 8:22-26

When Jesus and his disciples came to Bethsaida, Jesus was asked to touch a blind man who was brought to him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had put spittle on his eyes and laid his hands upon him, he asked, "Can you see anything?" The man, who was beginning to see, replied, "I see people! They look like trees, but they move around." Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again and the man could see perfectly. His sight was restored and he could see everything clearly.

Then Jesus sent him home saying, "Do not return to the village."

Commentary

IN Italian they call it "campanilismo". A "campanile" is a church bell-tower-in the context a village church bell-tower. 'Campanilismo' is the attitude of one who thinks that his own place is the only real place in the world. It applies to bigger villages too: a New Yorker said, "New York is real; the rest is done with mirrors!"

Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village; then when he had healed him he said, "Do not return to the village."

A village identifies you in too great detail. It locks you into a narrow identity. (And you do the same to the others; village is something we do to one another.) You are not free to see things differently from the other villagers-unless you are willing to accept the still narrower identity of village idiot. Leaving your village is like leaving the womb: it is a setting out into a new life.

Spiritually the village may symbolize the ego. One's ego is seldom the independent thing it claims to be: it is supported (even imprisoned) by a rather small group of like-thinking people. When that ego is really isolated it is the village idiot. "Idiot" comes from the Greek word "idios", which means "peculiar, private". We may have to become a village idiot for a time. It's a long hard road to humanity. [See also February 1]