The priesthood movement of Christ

(Mark 10:46-52)

The encyclical Brothers All invites a perspective gaze, one that does not adapt.

Pope Francis proposes visuals that provoke decision and action: new, energetic, visionary, reckless eyes, filled with "passage" and Hope.

It "speaks to us of a reality that is rooted in the depths of human beings, regardless of the concrete circumstances and historical conditioning in which they live. It speaks to us of a thirst, an aspiration, a yearning for fullness, for a fulfilled life, a measuring oneself against that which is great, against that which fills the heart and elevates the spirit toward great things, such as truth, goodness and beauty, justice and love. [...] Hope is bold, it knows how to look beyond personal comfort, the small certainties and compensations that narrow the horizon, to open itself to great ideals that make life more beautiful and dignified" (no. 55) [quoted from a Greeting to Young People in Havana, September 2015].

Distressed, Paul VI admitted:

"Yes, there are many mediocre Christians; and not only because they are weak or lacking in formation, but because they want to be mediocre and because they have their so-called good reasons of the right middle, of ne quid nimis, as if the Gospel were a school of moral indolence, or as if it authorized serving to conformism. Is this not hypocrisy? Inconsistency? Relativism according to the wind that blows?" [passim].

This sounds like a portrait of Bartimaeus' shoddy, blind life: "nothing too much," "never the excessive."

A sort of Don Abbondio-like existence, in contrast to which Manzoni delineates the icon of the man of Faith - who precisely stands out over the mediocre devotee - in the solemn and decisive figure of Cardinal Federigo.

Prelate who instead "had to fight with the gallant men of ne quid nimis, who, in everything, would have wanted him to stay within the limits, that is, within their limits."

Not the reassured qualunquism of a pious coward and situationalist, who pretends not to see, is content with his half-assed niche; he sits in the shoddy threshing floor of the minimum wage, he staggers along and does not expose himself.

The passage in Mark is the nimble fruit of the interweaving of a catechesis of explanation of the immediately preceding passage [the sights of the Apostles] and teaching on very early forms of baptismal liturgy reserved for the new believers, called 'photismòi-illuminati' [those who from the darkness of pagan life finally opened their eyes to the Light].

The passage illustrates what happens to a person when he or she encounters Christ and receives his existential orientation: he or she abandons established but not personally reworked positions and becomes a critical witness.

The narrative is set on comparing material downward gazes (such as those of pagans or arrogant followers) with open gazes capable of lifting man's eye from fetters of semblance, habit, and destructive outer or inner powers.

Comparison brings to the surface what matters in life, what has weight and is not swept away by the impediments of an empty spirituality, enraptured or attracted by epidermal cravings; harnessed to social role-frames or cultural and spiritual conformities-from customs inherited but not sifted.

In short: the Lord wants us to understand that conformity to environment and empty devotion inculcate a swampy, lifeless, unimportant understanding.

What, then, is needed to "see" with God's perception, beyond appearances, and to lift oneself up from a gray life of almsgiving, literally on the ground? And how to heal the vision of those who do not catch on?

Even the "neighbors" have more or less clear expectations of how to enter the Priesthood Movement of Christ.

The disciples themselves are suggestive of an often qualunquistic crowd around them who expect little but quiet, leisure and favor; and who press for entry "into their bounds."

The crouching at the edges Bartimaeus [textually, the 'son of the appreciated one'] represents us: he is not a free man, capable of activism.

Rather, beset by a hunger for prestige and recognition -- hunger and thirst that have been passed on by his own family and a whole ancient mentality that has remained haughty.

The "son of the honored" is not biologically blind (the Italian translation is uncertain) but one who adjusts himself haphazardly.

He fails to "look up" [the Greek key-verb in vv.51-52 is aná-blépein] because he does not cultivate ideals; he is content with what passes the outline, which anesthetizes him.

Conditioned by false teachers and approximate spiritual guides, seduced by a whole civilization of the outside world, he too is blocked by spirit of lethargy - grandiose only in velleity - which nevertheless points his existence downward.

Spiritual consequence: victims of indolent ideology may confuse the Son of God who gives all of himself and transmits vitality, with the son of David (vv.47-48) who does not give but takes away life.Jesus resembles and refers to the Father, not to a ruler albeit as prestigious as David; an able and quick-witted man, a figure of a violent style of domination in constant retaliation.

The misunderstanding has heavy consequences.

Initially, every seeker of God is in danger of mistaking the Lord for a phenomenal superman and captain who blesses and favors his friends in their expectations of tranquility, unconcern and mediocre stasis, or worldly glory and prestige.

Quite a sight flaw, for one reverses the criteria of wise and solid existence at all -- risking sticking it in a puddle of illusions; at best, dragging it skimming along the ground.

Bartimaeus is a man of habit, being escorted to the same places every day by the same people.

He stands still, "sitting" (v.46) at the edge of a road where people proceed and do not, like him, merely survive resignedly, unshaken.

[As I was writing this a high school prof of mine - a person of great faith and dynamism - sent me an Indian proverb: "if in front of you you see everything gray, move the elephant"].

Bartimaeus types expect everything from the recognition of others; they live only by begging. They just repeat the same words and gestures over and over again.

Their horizon at hand does not allow them to enter the flow of the Way where people get busy edifying, evolving, expressing themselves, providing for their less fortunate brothers and sisters.

An existence dragged to the margins of any interest other than their own neghittous pouch.

Yet they are endowed with a pronounced ancient religious sense; but for that very reason - lacking the leap of Faith - centered on themselves and the ideas that have been transmitted.

They live on the movement of others; they live on petty benevolences and opinions bartered by those who pass by, out of listlessness never reviewed and made their own.

The Word of the Nazarene [in the language of the Gospels the epithet "being of Nazareth" meant "revolutionary, hot-headed, subversive"] triggers the indolent.

Rather, his new attitude becomes that of the "newborn." In doing so, he engages in an industrious, creative, practical-futuristic pattern of life.

He resurrects dynamically, getting rid of the rags on which he expected others to lay something in his favor.

The old garment ends up in the dust - cast far away as in ancient baptismal liturgies: at whatever age it undertakes, outclassing small-minded securities.

He changes his life, looks it in the face; though he knows he complicates it, making it challenging and countercultural.

Personal contact with Jesus has corrected his gaze, made him recover his ideal outlook.

Now he understands the primal and regenerating - indeed, recreating - sense of God's Newness.

The Face-to-Face Encounter conveyed to him a diametrically opposite model of a successful man; not subservient to tacticism.

In short, Jesus corrects the inert myopia of those who are fond of their mediocre place.

"The wind that blows" infuses us with a lethal poison: the renunciatory poison of identifying-as-we-are, which rhymes with giving up and growing old.

Recovery from such blindness cannot be a... Miracle! Religiosity or Personal Faith: it is diriment choice.

It means lazily adapting to circumstantial fads or the old dress of already "said" behaviors and usual friendships, just waiting for some solution-lightning that does not involve too much...

That is, to start away from there, to reinvent one's life, to abandon the 'cloak' [cf. Mk. 10:50] on which communal comments and obols were gathered.

Opening his eyes and 'lifting them up,' as an already godly man would do. Pocketing nothing but pearls of light instead of alms.

On muddy roads we may get dirty and be uncertain, but we can proceed there in contentment: on the path that belongs to us; in the movement of Christ's priesthood. With sound perception.

For-as in this episode-the Gospels not infrequently insist on the (devoutly absurd) criterion that the enemy of God is not sin, but the 'average life' and passive of the 'honored,' now identified and placed.

To internalize and live the message:

Did the encounter with Christ remove like a veil from your eyes?

Have you seized the opportunity to be born as a new man, and lift your eyes? Or do you remain myopic and inert?

The Passover Passage

One day Jesus, approaching the city of Jericho, performed the miracle of restoring sight to a blind man begging along the road (cf. Lk 18:35-43). Today we want to grasp the significance of this sign because it touches us directly as well. The evangelist Luke says that that blind man was sitting by the roadside begging (cf. v. 35). A blind man in those days - but also until not so long ago - could only live on alms. The figure of this blind man represents so many people who, even today, find themselves marginalized because of physical or other disadvantage. He is separated from the crowd, he sits there while people pass by busy, absorbed in their own thoughts and many things...And the street, which can be a place of meeting, for him instead is a place of loneliness. So many crowds passing by...And he is alone.

It is a sad image of an outcast, especially against the backdrop of the city of Jericho, the beautiful and lush oasis in the desert. We know that it was in Jericho that the people of Israel arrived at the end of the long exodus from Egypt: that city represents the gateway to the promised land. We recall the words Moses speaks on that occasion, "If there be among you any of your brethren who are in need in one of your cities in the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not harden your heart nor close your hand before your brother in need. Since the needy will never be lacking in the land, then I give you this command and say to you, Generously open your hand to your poor and needy brother in your land" (Deut. 15:7, 11). The contrast between this recommendation of God's Law and the situation described in the Gospel is jarring: while the blind man cries out calling out for Jesus, the people rebuke him to be silent, as if he had no right to speak. They have no compassion for him; on the contrary, they feel annoyance at his cries. How many times do we, when we see so many people in the street -- people in need, sick, who have no food -- feel annoyance. How often, when we are faced with so many refugees and displaced people, we feel annoyance. It is a temptation we all have. All of us, even me! This is why the Word of God admonishes us by reminding us that indifference and hostility make us blind and deaf, prevent us from seeing our brothers and sisters and do not allow us to recognize the Lord in them. Indifference and hostility. And sometimes this indifference and hostility also becomes aggression and insult: "but kick them all out!", "put them somewhere else!". This aggression is what people did when the blind man shouted, "but you go away, come on, don't talk, don't shout."

We note an interesting detail. The Evangelist says that someone from the crowd explained to the blind man the reason for all those people, saying, "Jesus, the Nazarene, passes by!" (v. 37). Jesus' passing is referred to with the same verb used in the book of Exodus to refer to the passing of the exterminating angel who saves the Israelites in the land of Egypt (cf. Ex 12:23). It is the "passing by" of the Passover, the beginning of liberation: when Jesus passes by, always there is liberation, always there is salvation! To the blind man, therefore, it is as if his passover is being announced. Undaunted, the blind man cries out to Jesus several times, recognizing him as the Son of David, the expected Messiah who, according to the prophet Isaiah, would open the eyes of the blind (cf. Isaiah 35:5). Unlike the crowd, this blind man sees with the eyes of faith. Because of it, his plea has powerful efficacy. Indeed, upon hearing it, "Jesus stopped and commanded that they should bring him to him" (v. 40). In doing so, Jesus takes the blind man off the side of the road and places him in the center of attention of his disciples and the crowd. Let us also think, when we have been in bad situations, even sinful situations, how it was Jesus himself who took us by the hand and took us off the side of the road and gave us salvation. Thus a twofold passage is realized. First: the people had proclaimed good news to the blind man but wanted nothing to do with him; now Jesus forces everyone to become aware that good proclamation implies putting the one who was excluded from it at the center of one's path. Second, in turn, the blind man could not see, but his faith opens the way of salvation for him, and he finds himself among those who have gone down the street to see Jesus. Brothers and sisters, The passing of the Lord is an encounter of mercy that unites all around Him so that we can recognize those in need of help and consolation. In our lives, too, Jesus passes by; and when Jesus passes by, and I notice it, it is an invitation to draw closer to Him, to be better, to be a better Christian, to follow Jesus.

Jesus turns to the blind man and asks him, "What do you want me to do for you?" (v. 41). These words of Jesus are striking: the Son of God now stands before the blind man as a humble servant. He, Jesus, God, says, "But what do you want me to do for you? How do you want me to serve you?" God makes himself the servant of sinful man. And the blind man responds to Jesus no longer by calling him "Son of David," but "Lord," the title the Church from the beginning applies to the Risen Jesus. The blind man asks to see again, and his wish is granted: "Have sight again! Your faith has saved you" (v. 42). He has shown his faith by calling on Jesus and absolutely wanting to meet him, and this has brought him salvation as a gift. Because of faith he can now see and, more importantly, feel loved by Jesus. That is why the account ends by reporting that the blind man "began to follow him glorifying God" (v. 43): he becomes a disciple. From beggar to disciple, this is also our way: we are all beggars, all of us. We are always in need of salvation. And all of us, every day, need to take this step: from beggar to disciple. And so, the blind man sets out after the Lord by becoming part of his community. The one they wanted to silence now testifies aloud to his encounter with Jesus of Nazareth, and "all the people, seeing, gave praise to God" (v. 43). A second miracle occurs: what happened to the blind man causes the people to finally see as well. The same light enlightens everyone by uniting them in the prayer of praise. Thus Jesus pours out his mercy on everyone he meets: he calls them, brings them to himself, gathers them, heals them and enlightens them, creating a new people who celebrate the wonders of his merciful love. Let us also be called by Jesus, and let us be healed by Jesus, forgiven by Jesus, and go after Jesus praising God. So be it!

[Pope Francis, General Audience June 15, 2016].