Toward the end of the Church’s liturgical year, the gospels speak of the sun being darkened and the stars falling, and people feeling fear and awe. Something new is being born, and it is accompanied with birth pangs. The gospels of this season show Jesus on the journey to Jerusalem where, contrary to the expectation of his disciples, he will not be hailed as messiah by his countrymen and crowned, but reviled as an imposter and killed. Jesus himself senses that suffering and death await him, but nonetheless sets his face to go the holy city knowing that his sacrifice will mean salvation for the world.
On his way, he meets Bartimaeus, a blind man. Oh, we might say, just another cure. But this one is special. Bartimaeus may be blind, but he has a voice and he is not shy about using it. “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me!” he shouts, so loudly in fact that he made people around him so unconformable that they tried to quiet him down. Noticing the attempts to shut down Bartimaeus, Jesus says, “Call him over here.” Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” His answer is obvious, “I want to see!” Jesus says, “Go your way, your faith has saved you.”
What are we to take away from this scene? In many ways, it is a standard Gospel healing. But two things stand out. “Way” is an important word in Mark’s Gospel. It occurs many times and its meaning is more specific than we might think. The prophet Isaiah had proclaimed, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” meaning that the Lord was coming to save his people who were in great need. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus walks that same “way.” “Way” occurs twice in our passage. Before Jesus arrives, the blind beggar holds a spot “beside the way.” At the end, when he recovers his sight, Jesus tells him to get moving and “immediately he received his sight, throws away his cloak (which he used for begging) and followed him “on the way.”
Mark has written the Gospel for us today. The message is clear. We are blind, we are sitting beside the way (out of the flow of traffic). Jesus calls us today, and if we accept, we can throw away our cloak (or its equivalent) and follow him on the way. A simple story becomes a challenge. A miracle then, and a miracle now.
We can see the truth that the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins expressed: “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” It flashes forth in this Gospel with its challenge and its encouragement. The scene can encourage us to cast off our sins and turn to him for healing. Show us that Christ is the sure path to salvation and enables us to follow in the way of the gospel.