B - 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

October 26, 2003
Mark 10:46-52

Sight and Seeing

    Jose felt good about himself. He had been an engineer for only 10 years and he had already formed a construction firm. He had two big projects on hand, a bridge and a huge office building. Apart from bagging this juicy contract, he also made good money on the side. Where 1.5 inch bars were stipulated, he would use one-inch bars instead. Where the bars should be four inches apart, he would make it six inches instead. Where ten bags of cement were required, he would use only six. This way, he and his supplier were able to make millions. Sometimes images would flash through his mind, such as that of the inferiorly built Ruby Towers Building where hundreds died during an earthquake. Another time he dreamt of a traffic-laden bridge collapsing and of people screaming as they died. He usually shunned these ideas and banished them from his consciousness. He was a shrewd man; he knew how to grab an opportunity.

     When Holy Week came, he confessed to a priest that he had missed two Sunday Masses, used foul language with some of his workers, and had entertained himself with sexual thoughts from time to time. One time a friend asked him if he mentioned "the bridge" in his confession, and he replied, "I talk to my priest about my religion, not about my business affairs."

     Each of us has a way of compartmentalizing our lives, wearing blinders. Jose was blind and afflicted because he separated his conscience from his practice of religious rites.
One assumes that the first thing an afflicted person would want is to be relieved of their affliction. However, that is not always the case. I remember a man in hospital saying, "during my six months' stay I have been praying and looking forward to the day of my discharge. Tomorrow, I go home and I am terrified of having to face the day-to-day problems of life."
I knew a girl who would sometimes lose her balance because of a muscle defect in the leg, a result of polio she suffered as a child. One Christmas, her officemates went caroling to raise funds for the operation that would correct the defect. One would think this would have made her happy. In fact, it did not. She had learned all her life to blame her leg for her problems - for not socializing, for not having boyfriends and so on. Now she no longer had a psychological crutch to lean on and found it very hard to cope with reality; a part of her longed to go back to her afflicted condition.

     Facing reality is difficult for all human beings. In today's Gospel we hear the blind Bartimeus tell Jesus, "Lord that I may see." He says it with great conviction and a willingness to accept the consequences.

     Prayer should also be a way of saying, "Lord, that I may see." To pray is to be in an open, honest relationship with ourselves, with one another and with the Lord; it is a relationship that demands that all areas of our life be open to scrutiny.

     It is a relationship that allows no "off limits" areas, or no "no entry" signs, or no "off duty" periods. It is a relationship that calls for total honesty in facing our sinfulness, our fears, greed and insecurity, and the many games we play with ourselves.

     One of the games we play most often with ourselves is the noise game. Primitive people used to play the tom-tom drums to keep away the evil spirits. Very often we give ourselves the impression of being good through an abundance of words, music and action when we come to worship God. But this is not what God primarily wants from us.

     God wants us to say very truthfully in the silence of our hearts, "Lord, that I may see." Jesus wants the prayer of Bartimeus to come from a sincere heart that asks not only for the gift of sight so that we can see the world around us, but also for the gift of seeing - of seeing the truth, or the lack of it in the depths of our being, and then of taking the action necessary to reverse our blindness.

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Taken from Sundays into Silence - A Pathway to Life. Copyright © 1998 by Claretian Publications

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