Sunday October 24th : “Go; your faith has saved you.”

Gospel Reflections with Brian Maher OMI

As Jesus walked those dusty roads from village to village, constantly surrounded by people asking for healing, how did he decide who to heal? It is a question I have often pondered, not necessarily to find answers, but simply to try to come to know the Jesus of the Gospels a bit more clearly.

The answer, of course, is that we don’t know how he decided who to heal. He never tells us and so we find ourselves looking for clues – searching for the footprint in the mud, the dropped cigarette butt, the broken twig, the careless word that might help us solve the mystery.

My own ponderings have led me to a few simple and, maybe obvious, conclusions:

1. All of Jesus’ cures and other miracles seem to have been, not exclusively but overwhelmingly, granted to the ‘poor’ and those forgotten or on the periphery of society. Look at them… lepers, a widow, the paralysed, lame, deaf, blind and those presumed to be possessed by evil spirits.
2. All of his cures were governed by compassion and never done for show or attention. In fact, we know he pointedly refused to perform ‘any sign’ when asked to do so by the Pharisees (Mark 8).
3. All of his cures and miracles seem, somewhere in the mix, to involve faith. How frequently, like in today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Your faith has saved (cured) you.”

Here there are already wonderful lessons for us to learn. Our actions (large and small, important and trivial) must be grounded in compassion and not done for show or favour; our actions, all of them, must prioritise the ‘poor’, the people Pope Francis calls ‘the excluded’; and our deeds, our words, must somehow call out to others to trust, to believe, to hope.

Today’s Gospel, that wonderfully simple story of Jesus curing the blind man, Bartimaeus, shows all three of these things.

He is poor – blind, a beggar, sitting at the side of the road, ignored, told to keep quiet.

Jesus acts out of compassion. Notice how Jesus doesn’t presume to know what Bartimaeus wants. He asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?”. He treats this forgotten and ragged man with the utmost respect, talking to him as an equal, a person with dignity, a person with a right to say out loud what he wants.

Somehow, Jesus sees in Bartimaeus a ‘faith’ which allows him to be healed. “Go; your faith has saved you.”

Now we must be very careful when we talk about ‘faith’. It is a word which has caused divisions within Christianity, led to heresies, and filled libraries with theological discussion. Perhaps for Jesus it was simpler? It was, I think, about trusting and believing in something. It was also about ‘asking’ for something, not in a mild or mediocre way but with tenacity and courage (I love the way Pope Francis puts it in The Joy of the Gospel, 264, “We need to pray insistently that he will once more touch our lives.” There is something about being ‘insistent’ which is important to ‘faith’).

Bartimaeus believes that Jesus can cure him, and he has the courage and tenacity (almost a cussed stubbornness) to insist, despite his blindness and poverty and rejection, that he is heard. And he was!

So, what of our faith? How much do I really, truly believe that God can cure me, save me, and our world? How courageous and tenacious am I prepared to be to make God’s presence real and active in my life, in our world? These are not easy questions to answer and may even leave us feeling a bit uncomfortable…..

“What do you want me to do for you?”

But don’t worry…..tomorrow, in a gentle and quiet way, always respecting my dignity and freedom, Jesus will walk my road, and he will pause and ask again, “What do you want me to do for you?” And he will continue to stop, pause and ask again and again until I am ready to have my blindness cured. How great and wonderful is our God!

Before I finish this second reflection let me say a word of thanks to all who replied last week. A Gospel reflection is no more than one person’s response to the Gospel. We can each respond in our own way and from our own situation.

I welcome any thoughts, questions, even criticisms, you might have. I will attempt to answer questions in so far as I can, and respond to ideas expressed.

Maybe a bit later, we might look at developing a private discussion forum where we can more easily discuss these things. Maybe that’s not possible but, for some strange reason, as I always seem to finish, I’ll try!

– Brian

Brian is the director of Oblate Partners in Mission and is based at Denis Hurley House, Quex Road, Kilburn. If you have any comments, questions or thoughts on this scripture reflection, please feel welcome to email Brian at b.maher@oblates.ie

Thank you for reading and reflecting with us!

Go; your faith has saved you