Thirtieth Sunday (Year B)
(Jeremiah
31:7-9; Hebrews 5:1-6; Mark 10:46-52)
God’s Chosen People had been banished from their homeland
because they had, over many generations, become alienated from the Lord their God
by their sinful behaviour. The Promised Land had been God’s gift to them,
but, when they turned away from Him, dishonouring rather than glorifying His
holy Name, they lost first His favour and finally the gift with which He had so
bountifully endowed them.
Now, in our first reading today from the prophet Jeremiah,
God is showing that mercy to His People for which many prophets -- together
with holy men and women still to be found among the sinful people -- had long
been praying: He is returning His gift, bringing them back to their Promised
Land, and thereby inviting them to return to Him with their whole mind and heart. This physical returning home was to be an opportunity for them -- back
in God’s land -- to hopefully prove themselves more worthy to be God’s Chosen and
privileged People.
This physical return was hard, very hard indeed, leading
over desert and stony ways: food and drink being necessarily in short supply since,
after having had to pay the prices asked for them, they were then obliged to
carry those supplies on their own backs as well as on the backs of the few
animals they possessed. Moreover, backs
for carrying were not plentiful since they were returning with some treasured
possessions, and, above all, they were carrying infants and nurslings; moreover,
there were many who could not carry anything at all being either blind, lame,
sick, too old, or else heavily pregnant.
For all these reasons food and drink had to be strictly limited for a
journey that was long, over territory that was difficult, and under conditions
of great heat during the day and penetrating cold at night.
Those difficulties, however, were not the only nor the
greatest ones encountered by the returning exiles; for, although the physical trials
of that trek back to Israel were great, nevertheless, it was a journey completed
in a period of months; whereas on arrival in their homeland once more, there would
be many and greater difficulties concerning rebuilding and restoration which
would take years to resolve.
Above all, however, the very greatest challenge facing them
would be from their own wayward hearts and minds, for they still had to return
to the Lord their God in spirit and in truth.
The physical return home was indeed their great opportunity, but a truly
successful return would not to be accomplished without years of social
endeavour, and even more years of private, soul-searching, obedience and heart-felt
prayer, all finding fitting expression in reverent and sincere public worship
in the Temple.
With weeping they shall come, and
with consolations/supplications I will lead them back.
That is the experience, even today, of many who, for
whatever reason, leave Mother Church, and then are led, by the great mercy of
God, to return to the fold: their absence has changed them, and, during that
absence, Mother Church herself has changed, inevitably, since she is a living
Church surrounded by, and responding to, a world in flux. And even though such changes might, perhaps,
only have been slight, nevertheless, they are not imperceptible to those
sensitized by trial, with the result that some aspects of Church life may seem
less familiar, less homely, than before, whilst other changes might even seem
to strike an alien note to, or disturbing chord with, the hopes of those returning
wanderers.
However, changes in ones’ self and changes in the Church
are not the only sources of difficulties for exiles returning home; their
return can be made more difficult and trying by one thing that changes most
reluctantly, human nature: their own human nature and that of others.
And here we must notice the wisdom and the beauty of the
Gospel account: for we are not told either that Jesus rebuked ‘the rebukers’,
or that Bartimaeus took any notice of them:
As Jesus was leaving Jericho with
His disciples and a sizable crowd, Bartimaeus -- a blind man, the son of
Timaeus -- sat by the roadside begging.
On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say,
“Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.”
And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he kept calling all the more, “Son of
David, have pity on me!”
It was between Bartimaeus and Jesus and that is how it
remained.
It is easy for those ‘returning from exile’ to allow
themselves to be too aware of, or subject to, the attitude of ‘onlookers’. On the one hand their own nervousness may
make them touchy, or their self-love bolster itself with a whiff of pride more
easily than admit a trace of noticeable contrition; and on the other hand,
while a small minority might be critical, most -- though wanting be welcoming
and helpful -- may not always know how best to show their understanding and
sympathy, or simply let their own loving acceptance speak – without their
words -- for itself.
Now it is undeniably the case that all of us, even those
who have never been separated from Mother Church, are exiles returning to their
Father, because all of us have experienced that sense of alienation from God
which either personal sin, or the surrounding -- ever-threatening and
secretly-encroaching -- worldliness inevitably bring with them.
Moreover, we have before us a totally new and unimaginable
promise and prospect, for we are now called to prepare ourselves, or rather, to
allow ourselves to be prepared for, not simply a return to the natural condition
of Adam -- originally the friend of God -- but to the supernatural condition of
children of the heavenly Father, through sharing, by the Spirit, in the eternal
glory of Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God.
We have to make a journey not like that of the Israelites of old, simply
across perhaps unknown, though most certainly not unfamiliar, territory to a
land we had once wandered and worked before losing, but one into totally strange
and unknown ‘territory’ because it is supernatural and heavenly, one which our
imagination finds impossible to foreshadow, one with which it cannot, In any
way, familiarise us. We can aspire to undertake such a journey only out of love for, and confidence
in, Jesus; moreover, it is one we can actually
make only in the power of His
Spirit.
We were told in the second reading:
Every high priest is taken from
among men and made their representative before God, to offer gifts and
sacrifices for sins. No one takes this
honour upon himself but only when called by God.
Jesus, our Brother, offered His gifts to the Father for us,
since all of us had been exiled from the Father by sin. Only infinite love -- the love that Jesus
alone could offer -- could wipe out the insult of sin and fittingly respond to
that heavenly invitation. But if Jesus
was to give, express, divine love in and through His human body it could only
be by His bursting the limitations of that body, committing it to His Father’s
supreme glory. His human love for the
Father entailed the ultimate price: His crucified Body and Blood poured out. In that way He won for all of us exiles that
first gift of the Spirit, that original inspiration, to start us out on the way
back to our Father in Mother Church.
Thanks to the supreme prayer of Jesus and His ‘Sacrifice of Self’ on
Calvary -- the sacrifice made available and effective for all ages in Mother
Church’s continuous offering of Holy Mass -- we too can gain a hearing when we pray, as His disciples, Lord have mercy on me.
Having, in the name of Jesus, gained a hearing, and having
begun our return in Him and with Him to the Father, we have to persevere
throughout a long, and at times difficult, journey, overcoming -- as did those
returning exiles in the first reading -- trials from both without and within
ourselves. Thanks be to God, in Mother
Church, at Holy Mass, all of us who are, to whatever degree, alienated from the
Father by our sinfulness, can draw near and call out to Jesus as did Bartimeus
on hearing the noise of the crowd, because Jesus at Holy Mass is so close at
hand and so ready to hear our cries and answer us, as He did so long ago:
"What do you want Me to do
for you?" The blind man replied to Him, "Master, I want to see!"
What would you have asked for in such a situation, People
of God? What do you, in fact, ask of
Jesus at Holy Mass? Each of us is making
his or her own journey to the Father, and each and every one of us has his or
her own difficulties to overcome; but whatever our needs and whatever the
request we might ask of Jesus, let us remember and learn from what we are told
about Bartimeus, for Scripture says that:
Many rebuked him, telling him to
be silent; but he kept calling out all the more, "Son of David, have pity
on me!"
People of God, in our present situation under a positively
secular-minded and anti-religious government there is much opposition and
ridicule both public and in private for those who would serve God and
conscience first and foremost. Whatever
opposition you may encounter, whatever the difficulties and disappointments you
may experience, keep your hopes firmly fixed on Jesus, like Bartimeus, and pray
that despite all, through all, you might be enabled to hear and see well enough
to follow the Spirit of Jesus ever more closely along His way that leads
ultimately into the presence of the Father.
We are now surrounded by people who profess themselves
satisfied by what they think they know, and assert themselves able to do all things
necessary to sufficiently advance their own purposes and achieve their own goals;
their wise ones acknowledge no truth beyond their own ken, their mighty ones,
no realms beyond the reach of their abilities.
Consequently, they cannot understand, and indeed tend to dismiss or
despise, those of us who -- as Christians -- look to Jesus to give us, by His
Spirit, insight to recognize what is true, strength to walk along His way
towards its attainment, and ultimately to enjoy its fulfilment in His Father’s
Kingdom.
This process, in alien surroundings, of becoming one with Jesus
in love for the Father and the service of our fellows, is never-ending while we
are still on earth; and it is one that can only be accomplished in us, through
us, and for us, thanks to the Holy Spirit -- the Personal bond of love between
the Father and the Son -- bequeathed to us in Mother Church by Jesus. He is the Spirit whereby the love and the
truth of Jesus are sublimely active and effective in overcoming the sin of the
world; the Spirit whereby Jesus is able to comfort all who look to Him for
salvation and cry to Him with focussed love and confidence, using like words to
those He addessed to Bartimaeus:
Go, carry
on, your way; your faith and My Spirit will save y
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