“Bartimaeus threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus. Jesus said to him in reply, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man replied to him, “Master, I want to see.” (Mk 10:43-45)
Each of us has a deep longing for God. Despite our “worldliness,” we have a deep desire to encounter God. This is nothing new. It’s been the story of human history since the Fall of Adam and Eve as man has tried to “transcend” (the word means to “climb across”) the difficulties of this earthly life and reach into a higher reality that is God’s peace and tranquility. And that’s why God sent us His Son. Jesus joined Himself to our humanity to give us the capability to “climb across” to our Heavenly Father. Jesus makes God the Father accessible to us.
And so each of us wants to “see” Jesus. It’s the reason we call ourselves Christians. We want to see Jesus here on earth. We want to see Jesus in the faces of those we love and in the faces of those whom are difficult to love. We want to see Jesus in the poor, the sick, the lonely, the homeless, the suffering. We want to see Him in the commandments, which teach us how to love. We want to see Jesus in the beauty of His creation. We want to see Jesus in prayer. We want to see Jesus in the Sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist. We want to see Him in ourselves. And ultimately we want to see Him face-to-face in Heaven for all Eternity.
But we’re often blinded by the things of the world. Sin blinds us. Worries blind us. Pain and suffering blind us. Hatred and prejudices blind us. The inability to forgive robs us of our sight. Even our family and friends can blind us when we are content to focus our human relationships on the fleeting pleasures of earthly things rather than on the higher virtues of faith, hope and love!
Today, the Lord comes to us and asks us, “What do you want me to do for you?” Today we need to respond, each in our individual circumstances, “Lord, I want to see!” We need to beg him to open our eyes to the things of Heaven by removing from our eyes the things of the world that keep us bound to a lower reality. We need to beg him to remove from our vision the sinfulness of the world so we can live in a more beautiful and holy reality of the world to come. As we get close to the Feast of All Saints, we take the saints as our models of those whose eyes were open to see Christ in everything they did! Lord I want to see!
(Rev. Msgr.) Christopher H. Nalty
msgr.nalty@goodshepherdparishNOLA.com
