St. Edward on the Lake, Lakeport, MI
October 28, 2012
Jer 31:7-9; Heb 5:1-6; Mk 10:46-52
The Gospel passage today which shows Jesus and His response to Bartimaeus really epitomizes one of the key aspects of the Church’s teaching on social justice, and that is, our preferential option for the poor. In other words, you and I must always make the well-being of the poor a high priority. I think that’s something that we can all agree on. We must help the poor especially if we ourselves have been blessed.
In the story that we hear in today’s Gospel, a “sizable crowd” was passing by, and all focus was on Jesus. That seems to be not a bad thing. We are taught to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.[1] But it was such that the people, the “sizeable crowd,” were not paying any attention to the man by the side of the road (Bartimaeus). In fact, his cries for help were looked at as annoying, and the people wanted him silenced. Do we see the irony here? The people sought to focus their attention on Jesus and yet they didn’t see Him in the person of Bartimaeus. They are the hypocrites that Jesus so vehemently criticizes. They are the ones who Jesus is speaking about when He says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”[2] They did not realize that love of God cannot be separated from love of neighbor: “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me”.[3] The followers of Jesus must care for those in need.
And so Jesus has to give them a lesson by ministering to Bartimaeus Himself. You see, Bartimaeus symbolizes the marginalized of our society: the inconvenient, the burdensome, and the unwanted. Even today, sizeable crowds pass them by, many of them people who claim to follow Jesus. In today’s story, Jesus ignores the crowds who want Him for themselves and their cries to silence Bartimaeus. Instead, He paid attention to Bartimaeus’ call for help. He called him and healed him.
How often do we who claim to love God try to ignore the cries of those who are in need? How often do we pretend not to hear those cries or even try to silence them? Jesus ignored the crowds who wanted His attention because they ignored the needy one. Why would we expect anything different for us? If we want to be forgiven, we must forgive others. In the same way, if we want Jesus to hear our cries for help, we must hear the cries of those who ask for our help.
But who are the poor among us? Certainly there are many who are struggling financially who can’t pay their bills or feed their families. There are those who can’t find work. There are those who are spiritually poor who lack faith or hope. They all cry out for help, and as Catholics, we need to what we can. Jesus Himself reminded us, “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more”.[4] But there are some who are so poor, so vulnerable, that they can’t even cry out for themselves. Someone needs to cry out for them. I’m speaking, of course, of the unborn, and we who have been given life have an obligation to safeguard the lives of others especially those whose lives are being threatened even before birth.
Of course, we must beware because much like the “sizeable crowd” who wanted to silence Bartimaeus, our culture (which Blessed John Paul II called a culture of death) wants to silence the unborn and those who speak for them. And like Jesus, we need to ignore and even fight against that culture and minister to those who are in need. Dear brothers and sisters, we must not be discouraged nor distracted from our mission. As members of the Church, we are called to have as our top priority the well-being of the poor and vulnerable, and no one is more vulnerable in today’s world than the unborn who are being threatened even by leaders of nations.
Like many of you, I have been thinking about the election for quite some time now. And I’m certainly not a political expert by any stretch. But what has struck me is why people react to truth the way that they do.
Most people, even many pro-abortion politicians, acknowledge that inside the womb is not a blob of tissue but a human being. You don’t need to be religious to know that. Science can tell you that. And yet, many people just want to conveniently ignore that. That’s the funny thing about truth. When we acknowledge it, we have to respond to it (because we were made for truth). But yet many people simply try to ignore truth because they don’t want to have to respond to it. They are afraid of what it might cost them. Like power.
The Bible gives us the example of Pontius Pilate who once famously asked Jesus, “What is truth?”[5] even though Truth Itself was standing right in front of him. Man has an incredible ability to conveniently ignore truth even when it is staring him right in the face. Man has a tendency to be afraid of acting on truth because of what it might cost him.
You and I cannot be like that. Abortion is intrinsically evil, that it is the killing of an innocent life which began at conception. We can’t ignore that truth or hope that it goes away. And we can’t justify any action that allows abortion to happen.
You and I will very soon have an great opportunity to speak up for the poorest of the poor and to be the voice for the unborn. And like the “sizeable crowd”, the culture will try to silence our voices. But as the Church, we have a responsibility to ignore the crowds and assist those in need especially those who cannot help themselves. “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me”. How we treat the unborn is how we treat the Lord. How we treat the unborn is how we treat the One whom we receive in Holy Communion. May God bless us and give us the courage to use our voices to speak for those who cannot.
