Father Thomas Welbers' Homily	Jump back to Homily Index
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 26, 2003 Jeremiah 31:7-9 Hebrews 5:1-6 Mark 10:46-52	Listen to Audio

Jeremiah, whose words we heard in the first reading, was perhaps the foremost prophet of “gloom and doom” in the Old Testament. He had reason to be. Writing before the conquest of the Israelites by the Assyrians in 587 BC, he questioned and railed against the policies of the kings and the wealthy leaders of his day, policies that he correctly foresaw would lead only to destruction and exile. He lived to see his predictions come true. He witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, and was himself led off to Babylon in captivity. While in exile, he wrote the famous Lamentations, mourning the people’s alienation from God and homeland, but also wrote joyfully in hope of restoration – a hope based not on any virtue or wisdom on the part of the Israelites, but solely reliant on God’s goodness and the fulfillment of his promises made long in the past. It’s the joyful and hopeful side of his writings that we heard in the first reading today.

The experience of the exile, and Jeremiah’s prophecies surrounding it, remain a stark and eloquent testimony to the fragility of our human condition, and the inability of the ways of the world to truly bring justice or lasting peace. While we must participate in the world we live in, we also have to realize that the course of our lives is a journey, a pilgrimage, with another destination, the eternal fulfillment of God’s promise.

Read in this light, the event in the Gospel has deep meaning for us. Bartimaeus, the blind man begging at the side of the road just outside Jericho, discovered Jesus passing by, and overcame the obstacles of both his blindness and the antagonism of the disciples of Jesus in order to seek healing, restoration of his sight from Jesus. When Jesus does call to him, and heal him of blindness, he tells the man to go on his way. But the Gospel story tells us that Bartimaeus made the way of Jesus his way, and became a follower.

Bartimaeus is the only person who received healing from Jesus in the Gospels who is known by name. That’s a good indication that he remained a follower of Jesus, and was well known in the company of his other disciples.

So what was the result, the consequence, of his receiving his sight and following Jesus on the way with the other disciples? Well, where was Jesus going? He was on his way to Jerusalem. His Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem was just a day or so away. By this time next week, Bartimaeus would have experienced the devastation and trauma of seeing his new-found healer and savior suffering rejection, brutal torture and being nailed, hands and feet, to the cross.
Bartimaeus received his sight, and began his journey with Jesus, only to run head-on into the reality and mystery of the cross.

Our own experience of God’s gifts often leads where we do not anticipate. God’s gift of healing, in whatever way we may experience it, physically or spiritually, is often a gift of strength to be able to unite ourselves more perfectly with the cross, and the continuation of the suffering of Jesus in the suffering that remains so much a part of our world.

And yet, just as the unexpected and unmerited restoration of God’s people, delivered from exile, occurred in Jeremiah’s day, and just as Jesus’ resurrection followed his obedient submission, so too we can confidently expect that our road of union with Jesus Christ in his sacrifice here and now will also lead, without fail, to the gift of fulfillment of God’s promise of resurrection and eternal life.

© Thomas Welbers 2003