Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time-Cycle B

My Dear Friends in Christ,

Today’s Gospel reading from Mark reveals something of the radical nature of Christianity and its totalizing claims in the face of the world’s competing theoretical frameworks and ideologies. While this could certainly be said with respect to any of the Gospels, there is no beating around the bush with Mark, he gets right to the point. Though his sophistication as an author is sometimes underappreciated because of this, a closer look at the details included by Mark in his Gospel reveal that while he uses fewer words than the other Evangelists, he wastes none of them. Sometimes, as we will see, a single word or name quite literally speaks volumes.

Mark highlights the radical and totalizing nature of Christianity from the very opening lines of his Gospel. Unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark tells us nothing about the events surrounding Jesus’ birth, does not provide us with a genealogy, or recount any scenes from Jesus’ infancy or childhood. Moreover, Mark does not include anything close to the high theological nature of the Prologue of John’s Gospel, with its magnificent exposition of the Eternal Word made flesh, the very Creator of the world sent into the world to dispel the darkness of sin and ignorance by casting upon it the Light which is His very Life (John 1:1-18). That said, perhaps ironically, the very beginning of Mark’s Gospel is closer to John’s than the other Synoptics.

Never one to mince words, Mark begins: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). The word translated “good news” is the Greek euangeliou which stems from the root word euaggelion. As the Scripture scholar Raymond Brown notes, the word euaggelion and words related to it “were employed in non-Christian Greek for good news, especially news of victory in battle; and in the imperial cult the emperor’s birth and presence constitutes good news for the Roman world” (Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, 99). Thus, from the very opening line, Mark makes a radical claim, a claim that stands athwart the temporal powers of the world. “You there, who celebrate the victories of your emperor, your political party, your ideologies, let me tell you about a definitive victory that has been won, the victory of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.” For Mark to make such a claim doesn’t simply entail running ahead of the Victor so that all might be prepared to hail him upon his entry into town from the side of the road, as would have been the case with those spreading the “good news” of an imperial victory. Instead, Mark’s Gospel tells us that not only are we to hail the Victor who has won the definitive battle over everything that impedes God’s intended purpose for the human family, especially sin and death, but we have been called to share in His victory precisely by engaging in the same battle He has. Which brings us to today’s Gospel passage.

At the beginning of today’s Gospel reading, Mark notes that Jesus and the disciples “came to Jericho” (Mark 10:46). Jericho was a city about twenty miles northeast of Jerusalem, and the site of battle won by another Yeshua. Yeshua is a Hebrew name often translated as Joshua, or in the case of Christ, whose name was Yeshua Nazaret, translated Jesus due to the Greek translation of the name Yeshua, Iēsoûs. The name Yeshua has several meanings. It can simply mean “he saves.” In the Old Testament, Joshua son of Nun (Numbers 13:8) takes over as leader of the Israelite people after the death of Moses on Mount Nebo, “which is opposite of Jericho” (Deuteronomy 34:1; cf. 34:2-9). True to his name, Joshua is used as God’s instrument of salvation for the people of Israel, and successfully leads them to the Promised Land. One pivotal battle takes place at Jericho. There, Joshua led the Israelite soldiers on a march with the Ark of the Covenant, one time a day for six days around Jericho’s famously formidable walls (Joshua 6:3-4). On the seventh day, they marched around the city walls seven times, then, as the Lord had commanded him, Joshua implored the people to shout with all their might. “So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpets, they raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat; so the people charged straight ahead into the city and captured it” (Joshua 6:20).

There are four elements worth noting in this passage that help us make sense of what is going on in the Gospel for today. First and most simply is the city. It was at Jericho where Yeshua had led the People of God to victory over their enemies in an outstanding fashion. It should also be said that though a pivotal victory, the victory at Jericho would not be the final victory. There were still many battles to be fought in order to retake the Promised Land, as the rest of the Book of Joshua recounts. The final three elements to be noted figurative of the spiritual dynamics central to the account of today’s Gospel. In the account, Joshua listens to and obediently follows the instructions given to him by God to the letter, and then relays them to the people without alter. In turn, the people listen to Joshua and obediently follow his instructions, again, to the letter. Thus, there is a dynamic of attentive listening and action based upon the message communicated. Finally, there is the action, shouting.

In today’s Gospel Mark tells us that as Jesus, the disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, “Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside” (Mark 10:46). Again, as mentioned with regard to the opening lines of Mark’s Gospel, no words are wasted here, and more to it, we find Mark making another radical and totalizing claim. The most important thing to notice here is the name of the blind beggar. Strangely, Mark names him twice without interruption. “Bar” simply means “son of” in Aramaic. Thus, to name this figure Bartimaeus son of Timaeus is basically like saying “Son of Timaeus” “Son of Timaeus” twice. Apparently, Mark does not want us to miss this detail. Why? Just as Mark had used the word euaggelion to relativize the meaning of any imperial victory in light of the victory of Christ, here Mark uses the name Bartimaeus in order to relativize any claims to truth made by a famous philosopher in light of He Who Is the Way, Truth, and Life Incarnate (John 14:6). The philosopher in question is none other the famous Greek philosopher, Plato.

One of Plato’s famous dialogues is called the Timaeus. The Timaeus contains Plato’s cosmology, his account of the origins and structure of the universe. In other words, as all of Plato’s dialogues, the Timaeus is meant to teach his readers something about the very nature of reality. Moreover, philosophy in Plato’s time or, in Mark’s time for that matter, was not simply an armchair intellectual exercise as it is in today’s academic setting. Rather, philosophy, the compound of the Greek philo–sophia, was a way of life as the French philosopher and historian Pierre Hadot argues (Philosophy as a Way of Life, 82-83), a life lived out of love (philo) for and according to wisdom (sophia). A key component to living out of love for and in the pursuit of wisdom is learning how to see reality correctly in order to live according to reality as it really is. Accordingly, in the Timaeus, we find a section praising the power of sight. “Vision,” Plato writes:

is the cause of the greatest benefit to us, inasmuch as none of the accounts now given concerning the Universe would have ever been given if men had not seen the stars or the sun or the heaven…From these we have procured Philosophy in all its range (Timaeus, 47A-B).

He goes on to affirm that through sight philosophy is developed precisely in order that humans may imitate what is discovered concerning the nature of God, so that “by imitation of the absolutely unvarying revolutions of the God we might stabilize the variable revolutions within ourselves” (Timaeus, 47C). Without going too far astray here, we might say that what Plato has in mind is that the contemplation of the universe leads to a contemplation of God (the One, the Good), and that contemplation should lead us to imitate the Good so that we might assimilate to the life of the Good. For Plato, this is done by perfecting the powers of the soul via a life of virtue (see, e.g., Timaeus, 24D & The Republic, 585d-586b).

With all this in mind, we turn back to our Gospel reading. By telling us that the blind man in this episode is named Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, it is as though Mark is addressing the sons or followers of Plato or the Platonic school of philosophy. We can expand this idea to say that Mark is addressing the followers of any school of secular philosophy, or, perhaps more appropriately for our time, the followers of any of the ideologies which are thrust before our faces in the form of consumerism, relativism, wokeism, or any other ism you can think of today. To us and to all who find the meaning of life in a secular philosophy or any ideology, political or otherwise, Mark is saying in his own refreshingly concise and blunt fashion, “You’re blind!” “If you really want to see the Truth about reality and live accordingly, there is only one place, one way to find it, in Yeshua Nazaret.” Put differently, in a way similar to what Justin Martyr will teach less than a century later, Christianity is the True Philosophy (see Dialogue with Trypho, 8), for only does Christianity follow the very Wisdom of God Incarnate (see 1 Cor. 1:24).

Now, this is certainly not to say that there is nothing that can be learned from the various philosophical schools that have existed over the course of human history. In fact, we might say that by using the name Son of Timaeus, Mark is suggesting that those who pursue a life of philosophy are in a good position to recognize the Truth being offered in Jesus Christ. To his great credit, while the vast majority of people Jesus encounters throughout Mark’s Gospel misunderstand him, including the religious leaders of the day (see e.g., Mark 2:6-7 & 3:22), the secular authorities (see Mark 6:14-16), Jesus’ fellow countrymen (see Mark 6:2-3), and even Jesus’ own disciples (see e.g., Mark 8:14-21), Bartimaeus is one of the few who recognize just what Jesus’ arrival means, salvation.

The word salvation is derived from the Latin salus, meaning safety, health, and in a theological way, salvation from sin and death. Each of the healing miracles worked by Jesus is, in a sense, sacramental. For, while they are certainly miracles literally performed by Jesus, they point to a deeper healing He alone can work for the human family, the healing that comes by repairing the broken relationship between God and humanity. Only by overcoming this division which was the lot of the human family since the fall, can salus, healing in the most profound sense be obtained. In the person of Bartimaeus we learn how it is that we too might avail ourselves of the healing offered by Christ, the Divine Physician.

The dynamics here follow those extracted from Joshua and the Battle of Jericho above. In the first instance, Bartimaeus is on alert, he is an attentive listener. Thus, in the midst of the no doubt loud noise created by the crowd passing before him as he sat by the roadside, he hears that Jesus is among them (Mark 10:47). On hearing this, Bartimaeus wastes no time, but springs into action. Like the Israelite army marching around Jericho, Bartimaeus shouts, his first word being Yeshua. Here, a second meaning of the name Yeshua comes into play. In addition to meaning “he saves,” the name Yeshua can be understood as a Hebrew compound word, consisting of Yeho which is an abbreviated form of the unutterable name for God, YHWH, and shua, which means “a cry for help.” When put together we derive the more specific meaning of a “cry for help to God.” The response of the people around him is to hush him up: “Many sternly ordered him to be quiet,” but Bartimaeus was undaunted in the face of scoffers and naysayers. He persevered and “cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’” (Mark 10:48). Next we find the same dynamic only this time, Jesus Himself, the Divine Physician calls Bartimaeus to Himself through others just as God had relayed instructions to the Israelite people via Joshua at the Battle of Jericho: “Jesus stood still and said, ‘Call him here.’ And they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take heart; get up, he is calling you’” (Mark 10:49). Once again, Bartimaeus wastes no time, he knows the moment to strive earnestly to overcome his illness, to engage in the battle to overcome his weakness is at hand. “So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus” (Mark 10:50).

Standing now face to face, the wall that kept him from the God Who first loved him into being raised to the ground by his courageous shouting, the Divine Physician asks Bartimaeus directly, “What do you want me to do for you?” And Bartimaeus, no longer in need of shouting but close enough to whisper, perhaps gasping with spent energy and anxiety, feeling intensely that the moment of his healing is at hand if only God would deign to grant him this favor, responds with simple and direct words to God, a short concise faith filled prayer, “My teacher, let me see again” (Mark 10:51). And Jesus, as only God can do, pronounces words that effect reality, “Go; your faith has made you well” (Mark 10:52). And where does Bartimaeus go? Nowhere, and yet all the way at the same time. He goes nowhere because he remains at the side of Jesus. Mark tells us, “Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way” (Mark 10:52). Conversely, Bartimaeus goes all the way because now, having his eyes opened, he sees the truth of reality and begins living his life with Jesus at the center as his sole focus, following Him wherever He leads. The life of Jesus leads only one place, in the very next verse we find ourselves at Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, the time of His saving Passion now close at hand (Mark 11:1).

Drawing from what we have drawn from the episodes of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho and the healing of Bartimaeus we might now say a few things about how it is that we too can overcome spiritual blindness so as to live a truly philosophical life, i.e., a life that out of love pursues the Wisdom of God Incarnate.

First, as Joshua and the Israelite People, Bartimaeus was an attentive listener, and so must we be. Being an attentive listener means both taking care to listen to the right things and when listening, listen carefully and honestly. Our lives are filled with noise, voices distracting us, calling our attention every which way, promising pleasure, fulfillment, or just sheer distraction in the form of useless entertainment. One study done in 2019 found that Americans spend 4.5 hours per day on digital entertainment. How would our lives change if we spent less time on entertainment and more time reading? How much time do we spend in prayer? How much time do we spend prayerfully reading Scripture? How much time do we spend prayerfully reading the vast amounts of wondrous yet practical knowledge the great thinkers of our Tradition have gifted to us about who Jesus is and how it is that we as Christians are to follow and imitate Him? How much time do we spend prayerfully reading the lives of the saints who have shown us what it means to imitate Christ?

Time spent prayerfully reading Scripture, the Tradition’s great thinkers, and lives of the saints also has the advantage of making us more discerning and discriminating listeners. If our reading is correct on what Mark was suggesting in emphasizing the name Bartimaeus, as a philosopher, a pursuer of wisdom, Bartimaeus was already listening carefully so that he was able to notice when Jesus, the very Truth of God Incarnate, was passing him by. Time spent learning has the benefit of training us to recognize when it is that we are being presented with the truth or just another falsehood in every other area of life, be it on the news, a YouTube video, a blog, or some form of entertainment. If, on the other hand, we do not spend time prayerfully learning from Truth itself, anything that is consonant with what He has taught us and how He lived is likely to pass us by completely, while we become more and more susceptible to be taken in by some charlatan passing off as fact his all too human opinion.

Spending the time learning from our Tradition also is likely to make us more honest with ourselves, which is exactly what we see in Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus was extremely honest with himself, he knew who he was. He knew, most importantly, that he was not okay, that something was wrong with him, that he didn’t have life figured out, that he was blind. Of the things that cause spiritual blindness, the Fathers of the Church highlight our vices. “What is it that enflames the eye of the heart?” St. Augustine rhetorically asks. He responds, “Greed, avarice, injustice, worldly covetousness inflames, closes, blinds the eye of the heart” (Sermon 88.6). Some of us have many vices, others of us have a few choice vices that we simply struggle to shake off. Whatever the case may be, our vices distort our ability to perceive reality accurately and to live accordingly simply because our lives have become ordered according to them. It is important that we identify these shortcomings in our lives because it is the only way to correct them. This requires an honest look at ourselves, which is certainly not easy when we are so prone to self-deceit. The Jesuit historian and theologian, Fr. Will Kane, has this to say regarding self-deceit:

[We] even rationalize some of our imperfections and limitations, and fool ourselves into calling our laziness serenity or detachment, our covetousness industry and prudent foresight, our intolerance zeal, our touchy pride self-respect, and so on. It is easy to do this, because the outlines of our limitations are blurred to our sight. It is not always malice, it is often only the confusion resulting from ignorance, which makes us at times boast of our vices as if they were virtues. Our pharisaism takes a multitude of forms; but under all its manifestations it is, like so many other deceits, fundamentally a self-deceit” (Paradise Hunters, 46).

Finally, like Bartimaeus, we have to shout out to Jesus when he passes by so that whatever keeps us from communion with our loving God might be eliminated. How do we do this? Commenting on Jesus’ healing of two blind men as recounted by Matthew, St. Augustine asks:

But what’s the meaning of crying out to Christ, brothers and sisters, if not matching the grace of Christ with good works? I say this, my friends, in case we should be making noise with our voices, and remaining mute in our morals. Who are the ones who cry out to Christ, to have their inner blindness dispelled as Christ passes by, that is, as he administers temporal sacraments to us, by which we are reminded to lay hold of eternal realities? Who are the ones who cry out to Christ?  Those who think nothing of the world are the ones who cry out to Christ.  Those who scorn the pleasures of the world are the ones who cry out to Christ. Those who say with their lives rather than their lips, The world has been crucified to me and I to the world (Gal 6:14), they are the ones who cry out to Christ. Those who distribute and give to the poor, so that their justice endures forever and ever, they are the ones who cry out to Christ” (Sermon 88.12).

As Augustine suggests, it is through participation in the sacraments and by living lives of virtue which flow therefrom that we too, like Bartimaeus, utter a cry for help to God, to come heal us, to come save us. For, by engaging in these actions we draw near to Him Who is the very Virtue and Wisdom of God, Himself, Yeshua Nazaret (see 1 Cor. 1:24). And we must never stop crying out. As Bartimaeus shows us, Christ heals us in order that we may follow Him, and the longer we follow Him, the more our spiritual blindness is overcome and we come to see with clarity that the meaning of human life is this, living lives of complete self-gift, out of love for God and neighbor.

Your servant in Christ,
Tony