This gospel passage (Mark 10:46-52) is the setting in which the promise made by God through the prophet Jeremiah (31:7-9) unfolds. Jericho is an oasis with an abundance of vegetation and water. In it, life goes on easy, without major challenges. However, Jesus is leaving Jericho with his disciples because his destination is Jerusalem. The way to Jerusalem is all uphill and steep and grueling. Furthermore, humanly speaking, Jesus’ decision makes no sense at all. It makes no sense also to the disciples, even after Jesus told them that his brand of discipleship entails humble service, powerlessness, rejection, suffering and death.
If you recall this is exactly the lesson that Jesus taught us last Sunday. James and John asked him to single them out for special honors and power in his Kingdom of glory. But Jesus came back with an outlandish counterproposal: to drink from the cup of pain and suffering and to be baptized in humiliating and harrowing forms of self-denial and humble service.
Hastily, John and James said that they could…
Today’s passage, which follows that incident, alludes to three possible choices as Jesus leaves Jericho and heads for Jerusalem, i.e., for Calvary, for the cross.
1)The sizable crowd’s choice, 2) The disciples’ choice and 3) The choice of a blind man named Bartimaeus.
Everybody in that sizable crowd chooses to stay in the comfortable and easy way of life that Jericho offers. No surprise there. The surprise is in the fact that the disciples, who had physically seen and witnessed all that Jesus had done and taught, over the course of three years, follow Jesus up the road to Jerusalem without feeling privileged to be with God’s Anointed. Hence, they follow Jesus but without enthusiasm.
Ironically, Bartimaeus, the blind man, who physically never saw a single miracle or heard of a single teaching of Jesus, is so full of enthusiasm and expectation that nobody can convince him to keep quiet and stay put. He is the only one who sees that Jesus is the ultimate answer to the existential quests of humankind. Upon receiving his physical sight, Jesus suggests that Bartimaeus be on his way; however, filled with enthusiasm, he chooses instead to follow Jesus to… Jerusalem.
We must be impressed by Bartimaeus’ enthusiastic and courageous decision. Think about it: he embraces the teaching that genuine discipleship entails: humble service, powerlessness, rejection, suffering and death. Bartimaeus had to make one of two tough decisions: to be on his way as Jesus suggested and learn to make a living without the possibility of relying on begging as he had done up to the present time, or to live as a new disciple of Jesus embracing total insecurity along with humble service, powerlessness, rejection, suffering and possible premature death.
Reflecting on this, we might be wondering where we stand vis-à-vis Jesus and true discipleship. If we are here to celebrate this Eucharist, most likely it is because we have had evidence of his faithfulness, and we now believe that the Lord keeps his promises. However, I just pointed out to you that God keeps his promises in a very disconcerting way. He guides us up the rugged road to Jerusalem and he will fully reward us only in the resurrection, after we have experienced the horrors of our cross.
Well, I am sure that this is not the first time that we heard about God’s unusual ways. Chances are that we have considered ourselves disciples of Christ for ages, maybe since childhood. So, we should make a choice within a choice. But as true disciples of Christ we shall not make it temporary by commuting between Jerico and Jerusalem, between what the world proposes and what Christ Jesus expects of those who claim to be his true disciples. Are we uncommitted spiritual commuters? Or do we, at long last, make the same choice made by Bartimaeus, and embrace wholeheartedly insecurity, humble service, powerlessness, rejection, suffering and likely some forms of persecution and martyrdom?
As true disciples of Christ and citizens of this country, we are often called to make very important, difficult decisions with serious repercussions for our eternal salvation and for the wellbeing of countless people. By straddling between the secular world and the Gospel, it is quite possible that the stealthy work of the world of darkness, saturated as it is by the culture of death, might have blinded us to the light of the Gospel and desensitized us to the collective moral devastation caused by wokeness on the soul of our nation with its deliberate flight from reality and from the truth. To keep us from following Jesus up to Jerusalem, secularism and wokeness might suggest that we simply follow our conscience… That is naïve and misleading because our conscience has been already obscured by our prolonged stay in Jerico.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that we must follow our conscience after it has been well-formed by the principles of the Gospel as interpreted by the teaching authority of the Church (pope & bishops) and it is well-informed by reading extensively on crucial topics covered by the same teaching authority. Therefore, our first duty is to properly form and to correctly inform our conscience before we can make the decisions that true disciples like Bartimaeus ought to make. The pre-eminent effort engaging us must be to do all we can to protect life because, if life is denied to preborn babies, any other important issue becomes automatically pointless and moot.
We know that to do so implies that we face first our cross. But we are certain that God keeps his promises.
