For the sake of shortening post titles, I'm abbreviating "Arriving to a Decision (cont.)" in these next three steps to AtaDc.
If I continue to respond daily to God's call of grace in these Exercises, even on weekends, then I shall arrive at step 21 on Palm Sunday, just as the calendar suggests, perhaps with one day to spare.
The title of this step appeals to me in connection with the idea of the spiritual freedom which Christ has won for us. Even in some of the examples in the first AtaD step, Jesus Calls His Followers (step 16) we see examples of Jesus freeing people from the things that keep us from freely responding to him. As I continue to grow in him, I recognize that I also continue to need to be set free to choose to follow him on one way or another. So I am eager to see what examples and insights this step brings.
Mk 10: 46-52 - The first reading for this step is the healing of blind Bartimaeus. (If I'd started this step yesterday I'd feel as if I was a week early, because the RCIA option reading for next week, which we always use in our parish, is the healing of the man born blind from St. John's gospel.)
One thing that strikes me about Bartimaeus' plea is that he has no presumption of deserving the healing for which he is asking. Mercy is, by its very definition, something that is undeserved. (How interesting that this should tie in so directly with my thoughts from the last session of the previous step.) Yet he is nonetheless sufficiently, acutely aware of his need, and bold enough to cry out and to refuse to be shushed into silent resignation of his plight. He has had no hope for so long that he refuses to give up on the hope he has now.
The way Bartimaeus phrases what he wants from Jesus causes me to believe that he, too, has never been able to see. He doesn't ask that he may "recover" his sight, or that Jesus would "restore" his sight, but rather pleads, "Master, let me receive my sight." This causes me to wonder about the passage from St. John that we will hear this Sunday (Jn 9), and whether Bartimaeus is the same blind beggar about whom St. John writes. The details are different enough to suggest that they are different people, yet, St. Mark is often short on details. Ah, too much speculation about that distracts from the point I believe more pertinent to me today, yet the discussion in St. John is pertinent to that point.
We are blind in so many ways, yet often lack sufficient awareness of it to ask Jesus to let us receive our sight. I think of the useful definition of "evangelization" that I heard maybe fifteen years ago: "one blind beggar telling another blind beggar where he found some food." Maybe in this context it's more like a formerly blind beggar telling a currently blind beggar where he found his healing. At any rate, if we are unaware of our blindness, we do not receive healing and we do not lead others to theirs. Worse, in trying to do so, we are back to removing a speck from our brother's eye when we yet have a beam in our own.
This season of Lent is an annual opportunity to ask God to help us recognize our blindness so that we might know to call out to him to deliver us from it.
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