"Master, I Want to See"

While listening to Mark's gospel about how Jesus gave Bartimaeus his sight back, I was a little surprised by the question that Jesus posed to the poor blind man, "What do you want me to do for you?" (Mark 10:51). Though I have heard and read this passage many times in the past, never before it struck me as an odd question. As a blind man begging for alms, his disability and his need couldn't be anymore obvious - the man wants his sight back. He has already shown enough humility and trust in Jesus by his persistence, even when the crowd was annoyed at him for disturbing Jesus. Why would Jesus want to hear from the man the obvious?


Could it be possible that Jesus wasn't too sure what Bartimaeus wanted from Him? Yes he was blind, but he was not the only blind man standing there in front of Him - the whole crowd was blind. Just like Bartimaeus, everybody that accompanied or encountered Jesus on His way to Jerusalem was looking at Him, but not seeing Him. Bartimaeus suffered from physical blindness - the inability to see others; rest of the world suffered from spiritual blindness - the inability to see God in others. Though blind, Bartimaeus felt the divine presence because he left his mind open to see Jesus as who He really is. Holy Spirit enabled him to see through the eyes of faith, and his faith made him well. 

Today's humanity believes that they have answers for everything. We are proud about our knowledge, advances, and inventions in Medicine. Pride, rationalism, and indifference has allowed us to put aside our faith in God. What we forgot is that it is faith that enables us to see God in our neighbors. Faith allows us to see God in our daily actions, and it is faith that gives us the courage to trust Him in our trials and tribulations. Faith opens our eyes to see Jesus walking by. As we let our worldly knowledge blind us, we are also letting Jesus to walk by us and to pass by us. 

We continue to destroy the God given life in the name of Science and social advancement. We refuse to see the consequences of godless behavior by supporting abortion and euthanasia; we wreck havoc to the natural order by silently approving homosexuality and cloning; we allow darkness to abide in us through accepting unwise ideologies and opinions. Just like the crowd that followed Jesus, we too have allowed ourself to close our eyes to God by blindly accepting everything presented to us by the worldly knowledge. We credit the jars when water turns into wine, we applaud the paralytic when he picks up his mat to take with him - we admire the pen and ignore the writer. 

It is time for us to recognize that we have been blind, our pride and arrogance has kept us from seeing the glory of our Lord. We need to restore our faith to see Jesus walking by, to cry out to Him for help. In faith, we are to ask, seek and knock - humble, open and persistent - to gain the Wisdom to see God's presence in others and in all our daily activities. The Holy Spirit through faith opens our inner eyes, thus transforming us from the inside out, eventually restoring our sight to see, recognize and follow Jesus in His path as loyal disciples.

"Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God" (1 Corinthians 1:26-29)