Thursday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
The blind man of Jericho
They came to Jericho. And as he 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 out all the more, “Son of David, have pity on me.” Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” So they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take courage; get up, he is calling you.” He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus. Jesus said to him in reply, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man replied to him, “Master, I want to see.” Jesus told him, “Go your way; your faith has saved you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed him on the way. Mk 10,46-52
Any time when, opening the gospel, we meet Bartimaeus, it is as we would go to the mirror to make us aware of our spiritual status, to put it in a better order and to restart again with a new spirit to follow the Lord. This scene, in its extraordinary dynamics, speaks about us. In fact we are, because we are disturbed by the several poor people whom we meet, the disciples who, in that sunny street of Jericho, are following the Teacher in a tired mode, being disturbed by the yells of the blind man calling for help. We are, moreover, the blind Bartimaeus, being seated and margined from the life which flows along the street, but not so much blind not to realize the power of Jesus over the strengths of the evil. This is our situation, of which we are called to become aware to find the strength of the same jerk of vitality which has totally changed the life of Bartimaeus. We too, form the depth of our heart, have to start to yell: “Son of David, Jesus, have pity of me!”; repeating this yell one, ten, hundred times up to when he turns himself and we enter in the field of his attention. At this point we have to stand up as this blind man, throwing away the mantle of our useless things and running to Jesus, to be definitely cured from our blindness and to be able to follow him, with a new spirit on the road of the life. The edging of the poor Bartinaeus is also the one of several persons and nations of the nowadays time. A lot of them yell, others do not either have the strength to yell, other still, after having yelled for a lot of time, have lost their voice and they collapse at the margins of the progress which inexorable flows along the road. This is the historical moment of our times and we would, perhaps, to stop more often to talk with the several Bartimaeus who call for help along the road and to say to them, as Jesus said: “What do you want that I do for you?”.