Dear Brothers and Sisters, 

In this Sunday's Gospel (Mk 10: 46-52), we read that while the Lord passed through the streets of Jericho a blind man called Bartimaeus cried out loudly to him, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!". This prayer moved the heart of Jesus, who stopped, had him called over and healed him. 

The decisive moment was the direct, personal encounter between the Lord and that suffering man. They found each other face to face:  God with his desire to heal and the man with his desire to be healed; two freedoms, two converging desires. "What do you want me to do for you?" the Lord asks him. "Master, let me receive my sight", the blind man answers. "Go your way, your faith has saved you". 

With these words, the miracle was worked: God's joy and the man's joy. And Bartimaeus, who had come into the light, as the Gospel narrates, "followed him on the way"; that is, he became a disciple of the Lord and went up to Jerusalem with the Master to take part with him in the great mystery of salvation. This account, in the essentiality of its passages, recalls the catechumen's journey towards the Sacrament of Baptism, which in the ancient Church was also known as "Illumination". 

Faith is a journey of illumination: it starts with the humility of recognizing oneself as needy of salvation and arrives at the personal encounter with Christ, who calls one to follow him on the way of love. On this model the Church has formulated the itinerary of Christian initiation to prepare for Baptism, Confirmation (or Chrism) and the Eucharist. 

In places evangelized of old, where the Baptism of children is widespread, young people and adults are offered catechetical and spiritual experiences that enable them to follow the path of a mature and conscious rediscovery of faith in order to then take on a consistent commitment to witness to it. 

How important is the work that Pastors and catechists do in this field! The rediscovery of the value of one's own Baptism is at the root of every Christian's missionary commitment, because as we see in the Gospel, those who allow themselves to be fascinated by Christ cannot fail to witness to the joy of following in his footsteps. 

In this month of October, especially dedicated to missions, we understand ever more that it is precisely in virtue of Baptism that we possess a co-natural missionary vocation. 

Let us invoke the intercession of the Virgin Mary so that missionaries of the Gospel may multiply.

May every baptized person, closely united to the Lord, feel that he is called to proclaim God's love to everyone with the witness of his own life.

[Pope Benedict, Angelus October 29, 2006]

3. What is perhaps most striking in today's modern society in which we live is the loss in many of the true meaning of life. In a large sector of today's society, the transcendent meaning of existence has been obscured or sometimes lost. And, no longer knowing why and for whom one lives, it is easy to be swept away by the rush of passions, selfishness, cruelty, anarchy of the senses, the destruction of drugs, and despair.

We must turn our eyes to Christ: He alone "is the light that shines in the darkness; He is the true light that enlightens every man" (Jn. 1:5, 9).

Jesus is the Incarnate Word, the Revealer and Redeemer, who proclaims with absolute and definitive word, because it is divine, the authentic meaning of life, a precious gift given by God, who is the mysterious and merciful Love, which we must accept and make bear fruit, in function and in the perspective of eternal happiness. "I am the light of the world," Jesus said, "whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (Jn. 8:12). It is this fundamental and essential light that people are in living need of, always, but particularly today. Like the blind man of Jericho, recalled by the Gospel, modern man must turn to Jesus, with total confidence. "What do you want me to do for you?" - the Divine Master asked him; the blind man replied, "Lord, may I see again!" And Jesus healed him, saying, "Have sight again! Your faith has saved you!" (cf. Lk 18:35-43).

Only Christ can fully enlighten us about the problem of life and history: always be convinced of this and witness consistently and courageously to this faith of yours!

[Pope John Paul II, Todi November 22, 1981]

Today we begin a new series of catecheses on the theme of prayer. Prayer is the breath of faith; it is its most proper expression. Like a cry that issues from the heart of those who believe and entrust themselves to God. Let us think about the story of Bartimaeus, a character in the Gospel (cf. Mk 10:46-52), and I confess that for me he is the most likeable of all. He was blind and sat begging for alms by the roadside on the periphery of his city, Jericho. He is not an anonymous character. He has a face and a name: Bartimaeus, that is, “son of Timaeus”. One day he heard that Jesus would be passing through there. In fact, Jericho was a crossroads of people, continually criss-crossed by pilgrims and tradesmen. Thus, Bartimaeus positioned himself: he would have done anything possible to meet Jesus. So many people did the same. Let us recall Zacchaeus who climbed up the tree. Many wanted to see Jesus; he did too. In this way the man enters the Gospels as a voice that loudly cries out. He cannot see. He does not know whether Jesus is near or far away but he hears him. He understands this from the crowd which, at a certain point, grows and comes closer…. But he is completely alone and no one is concerned about him. And what does Bartimaeus do? He cries out. And he cries out and continues to cry out. He uses the only weapon he possesses: his voice. He begins to shout: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (v. 47). And he continues to cry out in this manner. His repeated cries are a nuisance. They do not seem polite and many people scold him, telling him to be quiet: “But be polite; do not do this”. However, Bartimaeus does not keep silent but rather cries out even more loudly: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (v. 47): That beautiful stubbornness of those who seek a grace and knock and knock on the door of God’s heart. He cries out; he knocks. That expression: “Son of David”, is very important. It means “the Messiah” — he professes the Messiah. It is a profession of faith that emerges from the mouth of that man who was despised by all. And Jesus listens to his cry. Bartimaeus’ prayer touches his heart, God’s heart, and the doors of salvation open up for him. Jesus calls for him. He jumps to his feet and those who had first told him to be quiet, now lead him to the Master. Jesus speaks to him. He asks him to express his desire — this is important — and then the cry becomes a request: “that I may see again, Lord!” (cf. v. 51).

Jesus says to him: “Go your way; your faith has made you well” (v. 52). He recognises in that poor, defenceless and despised man, all the power of his faith, which attracts the mercy and the power of God. Faith is having two hands raised up, a voice that cries out to implore the gift of salvation. The Catechism states that “humility is the foundation of prayer” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2559). Prayer is born of the earth, of the humus from which “humble”, “humility” derive. It comes from our precarious state, from our continuous thirst for God (cf. ibid., 2560-2561). Faith, as we have seen with Bartimaeus, is a cry. Lack of faith is the suppression of that cry. That attitude that the people had, in making him keep quiet: they were not people of faith, whereas he was. To suppress that cry is a type of omertà (code of silence). Faith is a protest against a pitiful condition the cause of which we do not understand. Lack of faith is to limit ourselves to endure a situation to which we have become accustomed. Faith is the hope of being saved. Lack of faith is becoming accustomed to the evil that oppresses us and continuing in that way.

Dear brothers and sisters, we begin this series of catecheses with Bartimaeus’ cry because perhaps everything is already written in someone like him. Bartimaeus is a persevering man. He was surrounded by people who explained that imploring was useless, that it was clamouring without receiving a reply, that it was noise that was only bothersome, and thus please stop crying out. But he did not remain in silence. And in the end he obtained what he wanted.

Greater than any discussion to the contrary, there is a voice in mankind’s heart that invokes. We all have this voice within. A voice that comes forth spontaneously without anyone commanding it, a voice that asks itself about the meaning of our journey on earth, especially when we find ourselves in darkness: “Jesus, have mercy on me! Jesus have mercy on me!”. This is a beautiful prayer.

But are these words perhaps not chiselled in all of creation? Everything invokes and implores so that the mystery of mercy may be definitively fulfilled. Not only Christians pray; they share their cry of prayer with all men and women. But the horizon can be further widened: Paul states that all of creation “has been groaning in travail together until now” (Rom 8:22). Artists are often the interpreters of this silent cry of creation that is found in every creature and emerges above all in the heart of men and women, because they are “beggars before God” (ccc, 2559). It is a beautiful definition of mankind: “beggars before God”. Thank you.

[Pope Francis, General Audience May 6, 2020]

XXVIII Sunday Ordinary Time (B) October 13, 2024

1. "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? So addresses such a one surely animated by good will and sincere intention to Jesus, who replies to him: if you want to enter eternal life you must keep the commandments i.e., do not kill, do not steal, do not be false, do not treat others badly, honor your father and mother, and the interlocutor replies that he knows all the commandments well, he has even put them into practice since his youth. Surely he expects applause for this, proper recognition, which is after all obvious if he really is such a faithful observer of the Mosaic law. Jesus, however, is not a doctor of the law, a master rabbi of doctrine, and he is not content to explain what one must do to be in good standing with God. Faithful observance of the commandments constitutes only a stage and not the goal of life. As always happens when one encounters God, this person is about to cross the greatest opportunity of his existence: Jesus fixes his gaze on him, loves him, and in this gesture there is everything. Here we are at the center of the story but also of this man's life, the moment when one can decide one's destiny by letting oneself be fixed by a gaze of love that is proposal and request, offer and provocation. In such cases it is risky and liberating to trust totally. To let oneself be taken in or to reject God's love is the very issue of eternal life. Of this encounter the evangelist seems to offer a detail that only the person concerned could report with such finesse. Some even think that St. Mark is recounting what he experienced as a protagonist. It could in fact be him, the young man who in the passion narrative (Mk 14:51 f; 16:5 f) follows Jesus from afar until in the Garden of Gethsemane he flees naked and abandons everything: he will later become a faithful disciple of Peter and will write the second gospel where traits with an autobiographical flavor are glimpsed. Christ's gaze of love continues to be a source of sadness until one gives up and the restlessness it leaves in one's soul can only be fruitful. Only one thing you lack, Christ tells him! This is not advice, it is an invitation to open our eyes, to wake up from the sleep of uncertainty, to understand what we really need to inherit eternal life, to enter the Kingdom. What is lacking? Go, sell everything you own and give it to the poor. Is there not a different way of expressing the commandment of love of neighbor here? The rich man loves the poor when he distributes all that he possesses to those who have nothing and nothing they can render him in return. And love for God must always be combined with this concrete love for others: we do not love God whom we cannot see if we do not love our neighbor who crosses our path instead.  Sell everything, then follow me! Only if you are free can you embrace the gospel: the proposal of following is immediate and clear. Here, however, we touch on the fragile side of the existence of this man whom tradition sometimes identifies as the rich young man: he has realized that to follow Christ and be part of the group of his disciples, one must be free of everything and he has realized that his riches enslave him, as a junkie depends on drugs. As a result, he leaves really sad and his sadness appears as a confession of his selfishness. However, the fact that he becomes sad is a positive sign because he is becoming aware and when he finishes thinking that heaven is not earned but is God's love offering, he will be ready to accept salvation, a free gift from his heavenly Father and not man's conquest. Jesus provoked him to deprive himself of everything, reversed the perspective: salvation cannot be earned, but is received on one's knees with a grateful spirit. To be able to come to do this there is no other way but freedom of heart: that is, we must be ready to detach ourselves from everything that in any way keeps us bound and prevents us from loving in earnest. At this point, St. Mark seems to take pleasure in showing that even the apostles are not in tune with Jesus' thinking because they too reason with the logic of merit. We are all, after all, in one way or another, in many ways slaves to ourselves!

2. What can Jesus do but constellate reality?  The Son of Man, who is homeless and does not even own a stone for a pillow, came into the world to show the path of freedom that leads to happiness, and he has to admit that even good people like this rich personage and even his disciples prefer the bank account to the gift of love that he proposes. The gospel narrates that at Jesus' words the apostles are amazed, indeed bewildered: therefore, even they are not in tune with their Master. We can understand them, however, because riches, as appears in some Old Testament texts, were considered a gift from heaven; the one who therefore possessed an abundance of them was considered fortunate and blessed. Jesus, however, as in other situations, does not sugarcoat his way of expressing himself, he does not discount because he did not come to abolish the Mosaic law but to bring it to full fruition, and he insists, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Each of us resembles the camel that claims to enter through the eye of a needle. It is a paradoxical image that always surprises, although Jesus is neither the first nor the only one to use it to indicate the near impossibility of accomplishing anything. There is, for example, another Hebrew saying from the same era, which we find in the Talmud of Babylon, about an elephant passing through the eye of a needle. Certainly the image is striking, indeed shocking, but Jesus uses it to warn: it is indeed difficult for those whose hearts are weighed down by material concerns to enter into the logic of God's kingdom. Attachment to material well-being, to what we possess, ends up making us feel self-sufficient and we easily become possessed by it, missing the opportunity to discover the beauty of life as a gift. However, what is impossible for humans becomes possible to God and if he can do everything, he also possesses every means to save us: only he can and will save us because saving oneself is neither easy nor difficult: it is absolutely impossible for man. Salvation is not purchased; it is a gift.

3. At this point Peter takes the floor on behalf of all: "Behold we have left everything and followed you." The step necessary to. enter the Kingdom of Heaven we have taken and we have left everything behind, so we certainly deserve something. Jesus takes them at their word and announces that they are entitled to the reward, but this reward comes with pain and toil: it is persecution following in the Master's footsteps because the disciple's mission will know the same mystery of the cross, the only path of liberation and salvation. He does not want to discourage them and promises much more than what they gave up to follow him: a hundredfold of everything except for what concerns the father because those who leave everything to follow Jesus discover the face of the one Father who is in heaven. The Father awaits us in eternal life as a gift and not as a reward. Ultimately detaching oneself from everything places in the human heart the deepest roots of hope that opens wide the gates of heaven. I am reminded in this regard of a phrase by Georges Bernanos from his famous novel "Diary of a Country Parson" in which he explores the themes of faith, suffering and hope. He writes, "I do believe that the world will be saved by the poor. These poor are there only we know them badly because they know each other badly too. They have made no vow of poverty: it is the good God who has made it for them, unbeknownst to them. The poor have the secret of hope." Jesus is the model of poverty who encourages us to embrace, serve and love the poor who become, as St. Vincent de Paul teaches, "our masters," and St. Louis Orione adds, "and we their servants" because they concretely live, without often realizing it, the gift of hope and, burdened by the labors of this earthly life, they confidently await heaven. "Such a poor man," Bernanos writes, "eats daily in the hand of God.

+ Giovanni D'Ercole

XXVII Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) 6 October 2024

1. It often happens, as on this Sunday, that the Gospel and the first reading refer to each other as if to complete the message that God wants to communicate to us. In the first reading, taken from the book of Genesis, we read: "The Lord God said, 'It is not good for man to be alone: I want to make him a helper who will be a match for him'" (Gen 2:18- 24). It is best to clarify at once that Genesis is not a history book, but a wisdom text dating back to the 10th century B.C., when a theologian, probably in King Solomon's court, wanted to reflect on the existential anxieties of the human being, asking himself, for example, "Why death? Why suffering? Why so many problems and difficulties in our lives? And to seek an answer, he developed a symbolic tale analogous to the parables of Jesus. The author of the book of Genesis is therefore not a scientist who wants to explain to us the why and when of creation, but rather a believer who wants to help us understand God's plan regarding the human being, with symbolic elements to be well interpreted because we are not talking about a hypothetical first couple of mankind - Adam and Eve - but in general about the origin of mankind and in fact in Hebrew the word Adam is not the name of someone, it means instead 'earth' that is made of dusty soil (adamah). For the creation of woman, the author of the sacred text uses the image of sleep and the rib taken from man. What does the Word of God want to tell us? Firstly, woman is part of creation from the beginning, and while this is a completely obvious fact for us, in those times it was an absolute novelty. In Mesopotamia, Abraham's homeland, it was thought that woman had not been created from the beginning and that man had previously lived well on his own.  The Bible, on the other hand, places the creation of woman right at the beginning and above all introduces her as a gift from God; without her, man could not be happy and humanity would be incomplete. The divinities of the peoples of the time, often rivals among themselves, created men to keep them as slaves; on the contrary, in the Bible God is One and by creating man he places him in the garden of paradise to be happy together with him. The phrase "It is not good that man should be alone" shows that he cares a great deal about our happiness and this constitutes an absolute and important novelty: that is, human sexuality, understood as a love relationship, is beautiful and good, an integral part of the original design of creation, willed by God as an element united to relational enjoyment between man and woman.  The idea of the rib taken from Adam emphasises that the Creator's design is not the domination of man over woman, but their equality in dialogue, which implies both intimacy and distance in a climate of mutual gift. The Hebrew helps us to better perceive why man is called 'Ish' and woman 'isha', two close terms that indicate belonging to the same family, even though one is different from the other.

2. There is one detail on which we focus our attention. In the second chapter of Genesis we read that the Lord asked man to name all the cattle, all the birds of the air and all the wild animals, entrusting him with power over the whole of creation. Adam, however, "found no help to match him" (Gen 2:20); only in front of the woman is his cry full of emotion and gratitude in the sense that he recognises her as part of himself and therefore considers her his "alter ego". In the astonishment of this moment, Yahweh's words take on resonance: "I want to make him a helper who corresponds to him", so that she may be his "interface". And when he specifies that 'it is not good for man to be alone', it is not to be understood that it is bad for man to remain unmarried, but that humanity is complete in its duality of man and woman, in a relationship of dialogue that harmonises intimacy with respect for mutual otherness. Herein lies the vocation of the couple: to be the image of God One and Trinitarian Communion. Another wisdom book of the Old Testament, The Song of Songs, a poetic dialogue between two lovers, reveals the mystery of divine intimacy by resorting to the outbursts, tenderness and intimacy of a loving couple. In Jewish tradition it is proclaimed at Passover/Pesach, which always falls in spring, a time of renewal and flowering, which ties in well with the themes of love and fertility expressed in the Canticle. Even more interestingly, the Jews proclaim the Song of Songs in the Passover celebration, the feast of the Covenant between God and his people, thus taking on a deep spiritual meaning: it is not just a hymn to human love, but a celebration of salvation and spiritual rebirth. Just as the Jews were freed from physical slavery, so divine love gives human life a new beginning. It was original sin that wounded the enchantment of the relationship with God, and this is reflected in the conjugal relationship that has become tiring and difficult because, as St Augustine writes in this regard: "marriage is a good whose union cannot be broken without sin" (De bono conjugali,24)

3. In the gospel, the Pharisees ask Jesus a provocative question about divorce, and he, as always, does not answer directly, instead helping them to seek the elements of the answer themselves.  Divorce existed in the Old Testament along with the act of repudiation, but was not codified systematically in the Torah, but only mentioned in Deuteronomy in a specific context without establishing detailed rules (Deut 24:1-4). By Jesus' time it had become a relatively widespread practice and there were different interpretations and practical applications. For Jesus, it is not casuistry that is important, but going back to the original plan of God who created human beings in his image - man and woman - so that the man detached from his family would be united with the woman to form one (Gen 2:24). If the couple reflects the image of God, its vocation can only be indivisibility, indissolubility, so that the conclusion becomes logical: 'So let no man put asunder what God has joined together'. Easy to say and complicated to realise as experience shows. This is because marriage is not a human invention, but God's plan, and it is only possible to bring it to full fruition with His support. That is, goodwill and human resources are not enough to preserve the unity of a couple and family. Only when one prays and lives united to God, with the help of his mercy does what is humanly impossible become a possible reality and the source of peaceful coexistence.  This is the heroism of couples who embrace the Gospel to the point of martyrdom of love in spite of everything: canonised married couples and many others hidden in the simplicity of daily fidelity. They courageously overcome obstacles and accept that the inevitable daily misunderstandings will never break their unity that the Lord has welded with matrimonial consecration. If this is the ideal that should never be hidden or reduced for fear of asking too much of those called to Christian marriage, a question often challenges our communities: what to do with couples who have lost their way or who prefer cohabitation to marriage? Every pastor has the duty to accompany everyone with patience and open-mindedness, especially when lacerating wounds mark their existence. However, while being aware of the existing problems, it would be a mistake to stop believing that only God's love can save the unity of the couple and the family from the shipwreck of divorce. In the gospel, Jesus adds: "because of the hardness of your heart" Moses allowed the writing of an act of repudiation, making it clear that the law is only a stage in divine pedagogy, while the goal always remains the supreme law of love. The risk is therefore 'hardening of the heart', that is, the pretence of being able to rely only on one's own strength. Referring to children, Jesus teaches that if unity in the family is to be preserved, the humble simplicity of the child full of trust in those who love him must be preserved. The secret then is to experience God's merciful love.

Happy Sunday to you all.

+Giovanni D'Ercole