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30TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)

  1. The Book of Psalms occupies a singular place in the Scriptures and in the Liturgy. Among the ancient Israelites, the Psalter was called the “Songbook of the Temple”. You and I today could call it the “Prayer Book of Jesus”. Thomas Aquinas introduced his commentary on the Psalter by observing – “The individual Books of the Bible” – he’s referring to the Old Testament – “have their own subject matter, but the Book of Psalms has the general matter of all theology because it treats of every work of God. Whatever is found in the other books in terms of history, or narrative, or prophecy is found in the Psalter by way of prayer and praise.” Psalm 126 provides us with our response to the first reading this afternoon: “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy”. Psalm 126 recalls God’s past intervention on behalf of his people who pray that such aid in the past may serve as motivation for help in the present. It is placed in the Liturgy today to follow our first reading from Jeremiah. Chapter 31 can be considered the climax of Jeremiah’s prophecy. It tells the good news about God, Israel’s Redeemer. It announces that the Lord has delivered his people in the form of a remnant of Israel. The collapse of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah was pure tragedy. Then came the bitter exile. But God intervenes to gather his people and lead them home in a reverse exodus. No wonder the people could sing – “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.”

  2. Surely Bartimaeus, in our Gospel reading, could have sung Psalm 126. In his blindness, Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus who not only heals him from his blindness, but He calls him to discipleship. As our Gospel describes it, Bartimaeus received his sight and started to follow Jesus up the road. Who knows he could have been singing our responsorial psalm: “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy”. As we reflect on the experience of the Israelites in Jeremiah’s time, as we reflect on the experience of Bartimaeus, should we not ask – What about ourselves? Are we not the recipient of the Good News, that our Savior has done away with death and brought us life through the Gospel? Has not God our Father rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his beloved Son? Have we not been brought from sin to grace, from death to life by the dying and rising of the Lord Jesus? This is why we can make our own the words of the 126th Psalm. This is why we gather together each Sunday at the Eucharist to acknowledge in Thanksgiving all the great things the Lord has done for us, is doing for us, and will continue to do for us until he brings us finally from exile to our historic destiny – life everlasting with our Three-Personed God.

  3. The Scriptures are silent about what ultimately became of Bartimaeus. Immediately following the restoration of his sight, St. Mark remarks – “He followed Jesus on the way.” Our interest then is not the historical Bartimaeus; rather we can see Bartimaeus as a symbol of the human heart’s restlessness in the face of misery and in the search for mercy – for mercy is nothing more than God’s love for each one of us in the face of our misery. As one writer puts it – “No depth of darkness can prevent the human heart from crying out for the answers it seeks to find – wittingly or unwittingly – in Jesus the Lord. As Pope Benedict remarks – “The outlook of faith is the outlook of the truth that may be obscured and trampled upon but can never perish.” When the Lord Jesus asked Bartimaeus – “What do you want me to do for you?” – he replied – “Master, I want to see”. I want to know you. I want to follow you. I want to know myself as well. I want to know who I am and where I came from and what’s wrong with me and what is my goal in human existence, and how is that goal to be achieved? The story of Bartimaeus is the story of the grace-inspired search for the gift of faith.

  4. What then do we mean by faith? Faith is a form of knowledge – knowledge of what God has done for us, is doing for us in Christ his Son and in his Holy Spirit. Faith means trust in God’s word to us through Christ and through the Holy Spirit. Faith means obedience to God – for all sin is basically unbelief. Faith involves a community of life with God, a sharing in God’s very life brought to earth by the Lord Jesus and given to men and women of faith through the Scriptures and through the sacraments of the Church. Faith means this community of life with God brought to perfection in heaven which means our knowing God, our loving God and our enjoying the vision of God for all eternity.

  5. At the Second Vatican Council, the world’s bishops addressed the many forms of unbelief that prevail in our world today. The bishops wrote – “Undeniably, those who willfully shut out God from their hearts and try to dodge religious questions are not following the dictates of their consciences, and hence are not free of blame; yet believers themselves frequently bear some responsibility for this situation. For, taken as a whole, atheism is not a spontaneous development but stems from a variety of causes, including a critical reaction against religious beliefs in general and against Christian believers in particular. Hence, believers can have more than a little to do with the birth of unbelief. To the extent that they neglect their own training in the faith, or teach erroneous doctrine, or are deficient in their religious, moral or social life, they must be said to conceal rather than reveal the authentic fact of God.”

  6. A modern day Bartimaeus is Edith Stein, known by her religious name – St. Teresa of the Cross. Though born into a Jewish family – her mother was a devout practicing Jew – Edith for many years traveled the arduous path of philosophy with passionate enthusiasm for what is truth. Eventually she was rewarded. She discovered that truth ultimately had a name – namely – Jesus Christ – and she came to understand that truth is always accompanied by love and that truth without love isn’t really truth, and love without truth isn’t really love. “With both truth and love,” she writes, “there is the cross.” Edith writes – “Do not accept anything as the truth if it lacks love. And do not accept anything as love if it lacks the truth. The one without the other becomes a destructive lie.”

  7. As we reflect on our friend Bartimaeus, and we think of the heroism of Edith Stein, and we try to assess how good the Lord has been to us, should we not read the 126th Psalm and say with its author – “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.”