Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

Part of the Christian experience is the tension between need, prayer, and waiting. We struggle in life, and amid that struggle, call out to God for help. This calling out in prayer might last quite a long time, years maybe. In that waiting, we are tempted to fall away because God doesn’t seem to care or isn’t listening. Perhaps the struggle becomes too great, or the change is so subtle we don’t notice.

Take the blind man in today’s Gospel. He cries out again and again, “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me!” He has dealt with blindness for many years, longed many years for a miraculous healing. Now, when Christ is near, he cries out but isn’t heard and is silenced. But he continues without losing hope. Almost at the last moment, as Christ is nearly gone, he is heard, “Call him!” Jesus encounters the man and asks, “what do you want me to do for you?” Immediately the man says, help me see! The force of his faith is strong, and Jesus offers him what he desires, and the man can now see. A man enlivened by the experience now follows Jesus.

We can learn some crucial lessons from this story about our own experience of need, prayer, and waiting. Like Bartimaeus, we often wait for many years before we are given a chance for healing. But why wait? The waiting helps us make sure we ask for the right thing for the right reasons. How often have we have acted on the impulse to get something we thought we needed only to find out it was the wrong choice? It’s happened a lot, I’m sure. If we would’ve just waited, we would have been given the right opportunity.

Jesus desires to give us what we want, good or bad but hopes that we learn what we truly desire and need and not act on impulse through waiting. This is the effect it had on Bartimaeus. His waiting purified his hopes—he always wanted to see, but now he does so so that he can follow Christ!

Let us be patient in asking for what we need in the face of waiting. Be willing to be transformed and changed so that we have what we need for the right reasons when the gift comes.

Reflection by Fr. Etienne Huard, OSB