Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), October 25, 2015 – Jer 31, 7-9; Heb 5, 1-6; Mk 10, 46-52
You are a priest forever (Heb 5, 6)
Jesus is our High Priest, the only Supreme Pontiff really, the bridge-builder that gives us human beings access to God.
Tested in every way, just as we are, yet without sin, and hence able to sympathize with us, this one and only Mediator between God and human beings becomes all things to all, in order to save all. To the weak he becomes weak, for example, and he is eyes to the blind, feet to the lame and a father to the poor.
No, the Lord’s righteous Son does not abandon us to our fate. Anointed and sent to evangelize the poor, he sees to it especially that the blind and the lame, pregnant women and nursing mothers—that is to say, the most vulnerable of all—are part of the people that he is gathering from the ends of the world and delivering.
We are not helpless, therefore, in the midst of our afflictions; Jesus tenderly yearns to gather us together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings, to save us. He is only waiting for us to do as the blind Bartimaeus.
In the first place, we have to confess we are people in need. We cannot have the same attitude as those who asked, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?” to which the reply was, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.” They knew it all and were sufficient unto themselves.
Full of ourselves, we leave no room for Jesus. So, as St. Vincent de Paul advises, we have to empty ourselves of ourselves to clothe ourselves with Jesus Christ (SV.FR XI:343) by not shutting ourselves up in our own interests that make us blind to others’ interests and indifferent to their suffering, not becoming a roadblock, but a bridge instead.
In the second place, our admission of poverty and our renunciation of prideful sufficiency must come accompanied by an irrepressible faith in Jesus. Finding ourselves by the noisy and dizzying roadside of selling and buying, on the margins of an individualistic, consumerist and blind society, we have to keep shouting until we are heard.
And those who are heard and called by Jesus throw aside their cloaks, spring up and go to him. That is to say, rather than dwell on their adversities, they focus on him, recognizing “that the throne of God’s goodness and mercies is established on the foundation of our miseries” (SV.FR II:290; V:165). In them, cured now and turned into disciples, is revealed the salvation that comes from the one who, becoming all things to all, loses his life by giving up his body and shedding his blood for all.
Jesus, have pity on me!
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