Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”
So they called the blind man, saying to him,
“Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you.”
Mark 10:46-52
30th SUN ORDINARY TIME
One day the parish priest announced that he found a brown envelop with a huge amount of money. He added that if anyone lost it he may claim it in the parish office. That day a long lone of claimants arrived at his office but all of them false ones.
It is true we search for what we lose. And we lose a lot of other things besides money like keys, I.D. cards, cellphones, and yes also persons.
An old man died. In his last will he bequeathed his big house to both his daughter and son to be shared between the two. While his daughter had stayed with him raising a family of her own, his son had been lost and away for twenty years. His son actually had rebelled because the father took away the son’s fiancée. Repentant the father had reached out for one last time to his son.
Do we also search for people we lose?
Like the contrite father, God reaches out to people especially those who are far from Him like those at the periphery, at the boundary, at the limit.
This is why God called His people back from distant Babylon to return to Israel after a long exile. Jer 31:7-9.
This is also the reason why In the gospel Jesus called out the blind Barimeus who had first called Him from the crowd that had tried to drown his voice. Mark 10:46-52
It is unthinkable that the crowd would do such a cruel thing as to prevent someone who coming near to Jesus. The crowd shoved Bartimeus to the side of the road. They told him to shut up when he shouted at Jesus.
But that is what we do every time we discriminate someone; when educated people look down at the illiterate who cannot speak good English; when the well off looked down at the homeless sleeping on the pavement; when the daily mass goers shun ex-convicts.
It is precisely these people who need saving from Jesus, the persons sought for by Jesus. They are what Pope Francis calls the least, the last and the lost.
Not everyone goes to work in mission lands. We most probably won’t have that chance. But we could still share in a mission of sorts without leaving our homes, not by preaching but by making way for people to encounter Jesus. We could start by stopping discrimination of sinners who need Jesus the most. We could begin by removing the self-righteous perceptions of ourselves. We are all missionaries that still need also to be converted.
In the gospel after being cured by Jesus the blind Bartimeus followed Jesus while the crowd simply tagged along. Only by being cured of our sins can we truly follow Jesus.
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