October 29th 2000 – 30th Sunday
"B"
HOMILY
In the prophecy of Jeremiah, describing the return from exile, we heard
these words: "I will gather them from the ends of the world, with the
blind and the lame in their midst..." The important word here is "gather". Jesus has come to gather us into one people united by a common vision.
Most of our life is controlled, not by what we see but by a certain
number of assumptions that we have inherited from our culture and have been
transmitted to us through our education. We hardly realize how much our life is conditioned by various sets of
assumptions, some of them concerning our perception of the physical reality
around us, others related to our philosophical or theological systems. An assumption is some‑thing you
assume, something you take for granted. It can be either something that has been demonstrated or that cannot be
demonstrated. Every time someone questions one of our positions or statements
and we answer: "Well, that's obvious!", we express an
assumption. It's obvious for me, but
not necessarily for the other person.
Various sets of assumptions is what founds the collective identity of a
group, of a culture, of a religion. They open us to a certain understanding of
reality, but they also limit us to that understanding. They make it very difficult for us to
understand anybody else who starts from different systems or sets of
assumptions. Some assumptions are even
built into our senses. Take our eyes,
for example. They are built in such a way
that they can perceive only a very small part of the electro‑magnetic
spectrum. They don't see the infra‑red
light, neither the ultra‑violet. All those limitations affect the way we
look at the world.
Jesus was surrounded by disciples and crowds who could see with the two
eyes of their bodies, but were unable to recognize him as the Son of David, the
Messiah. Then, comes that Bartimaeus,
who in his blindness has a special insight into reality and who spontaneously
calls him: "Jesus Son of David". Jesus is impressed and says "What do you want me to do for
you". "I want to see", he replies, and he is healed by Jesus.
It is not easy to adapt to a new perception of reality. A book was written several years ago (Marius
von Senden, Space and Sight) that speak of persons who were born blind
and who recovered the sight when they were adult, thanks to a surgical
intervention. These persons had a very hard time adapting to a new perception
of things. Even if they could identify
the forms and sizes of any object by touching them, before the operation, they
could not distinguish a ball from a cube just by seeing them. Some had to close their eyes to go up or
down a staircase without tripping!
What did the blind beggar do after his healing? Immediately he started
to follow Jesus up the road. And it was
the road from Jericho to Jerusalem where Jesus was going to his Passion. We
don't know how well he adapted to that new existence...
What we know from our own experience is that each time we have been
given to see a little more into ourselves, a little more of who God is, a
little more of the complexity of people and things around us, it has caused
changes, often painful ones, in our lives. Maybe we have continued to say: "Jesus, Son of David, I want to
see". But maybe we have stopped
making that prayer, preferring to return to the quietness of our anterior
state. Things can be much nicer the way
we figure them out than the way they are in reality.!
It is much nicer to built the world mentally as we want it to be than to
adapt to a world that we have to build with the rest of humankind. "I will
gather them from the ends of the world, with the blind and the lame in their
midst," says the Lord.
On this Sunday called the World Mission Sunday, let us welcome in our
lives Jesus who came to take each one of us out of our own little world to
gather us into one people united by a common vision.