Today’s Gospel reading about Jesus’ healing of the blind man, Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52), has much to teach us as we begin Justice, Peace and Community Week (JPCW) from Oct 24-31 on the theme: Let’s build inclusive communities.
But before I focus on the reading, I congratulate Bernadette Patrick and the Magnificat team for a spiritually uplifting retreat on Saturday October 17.
Inter alia, Kathleen Beckman, the guest speaker (USA), reminded us that we were not randomly created: “You were fathered by Abba Father and you have a unique mission that only you can fulfill.”
Remember the words of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman: “God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.”
We live in a time in which spiritual warfare tests our faith daily, Beckman said, and urged us to “be steadfast” in our “faith, hope and love.”
To persevere in the battle, we need to be as persistent as Bartimaeus and keep calling out to Jesus to remove the scales of worldly blindness from our eyes and let us SEE the truth through the eyes of our faith.
In a world in which moral relativism, individualism, greed and selfishness threaten to blind and overwhelm us, let us use our free will to hold on to our faith and follow Christ. After Bartimaeus was healed, Jesus did not instruct him to follow Him – Bartimaeus did so of his own volition.
God gives us free will; let us use it to ‘do’ justice, to ‘be’ peacemakers, and to build community.
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As well as raising awareness of the inhumanity of the death penalty, we were collecting signatures, as part of a global petition, to send to Malaysia to seek mercy for a young man, Shahrul Izani, who, when he was 19 years, was caught with 622 grammes of cannabis. Having lost all his appeals, and because of the mandatory nature of the death penalty there, Izani now faces execution.
Catholics cannot sit on the sidelines and not speak out against unjust laws.
Pope Francis constantly warns us to resist the globalisation of indifference: “Usually, when we are healthy and comfortable, we forget about others (something God the Father never does): we are unconcerned with their problems, their sufferings and the injustices they endure… Our heart grows cold… Indifference to our neighbour and to God also represents a real temptation for us Christians… It is a problem which we, as Christians, need to confront.” (Lenten Message, 2015).
JPCW is a time of grace; a time of enlightenment. Like Bartimeaus, let us jump up, throw off our cloak of indifference and live our faith by reaching out to the poor, the vulnerable, the homeless, the marginalised, and the socially excluded.
As we approach the Jubilee Year of Mercy, let us show mercy, to others by standing in solidarity with them – including those who have drifted away from their faith.
Like Bartimeaus, there are many ‘outcasts’ in T&T/the world; people who live on the margins, crying out for help. When we observe discrimination/exclusion of others, do we walk on the other side of the road and ignore their plight, or do we act like the Good Samaritan and reach out in love to help others?
It is by our love that others will know that we are Catholics. Since we learn to love firstly in our families, let us help to strengthen family life. Do you know the families that are struggling and need support in your extended family, in your street, in your parish?
In referring to this reading last year, Pope Francis reminds us that by “looking at the Lord” we can end up “not seeing the Lord’s needs: we don’t see the Lord who is hungry, who is thirsty, who is in prison, who is in the hospital”. Indeed, we fail to see the “Lord in the outcast.”http://www.osservatoreromano.va/en/news/jericho-rome.
Remember, our actions must be underpinned by prayer. During JPCW, let us pray that the light of our faith will lead us to demonstrate that we can be evangelists of the virtue of mercy.
