30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jesus asks Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?”  Bartimaeus simply responds, “Master, I want to see.” We may have 20/20 vision, but we can still be blind to God’s presence in our lives.  We may wear corrective lenses, and still not see the beauty around us. We may be looking right at someone and not see who they truly are. We often times suffer from a spiritual blindness.  To see with the eyes of faith. Today I would like to propose that seeing things through the lens of faith, to see things with occhi della fede can be lifechanging. Let me give you 3 examples.

1. How we see others.  Just this last week, we celebrated the feast day of Pope St. John Paul II.  In May of 81 a non-Christian man, Mehmet Agca, tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II and shot him twice.  The pope survived and would later visit Mehmet in prison, and forgave him. When JPII looked at Mehmet, he did not see an enemy or an evil man, he saw a child of God.  Eventually, while in prison, Mehmet would convert to Christianity and in 2014 he returned to Rome, this time not with a gun in his hand but a dozen roses which he laid at the Popes tomb.  The Pope saw this man with Eyes of faith.

2. How we see ourselves.  We often time look at ourselves and just focus on the negative.  We see our sins and think we are unworthy of God’s love. We see our mistakes and think we are a failure.  The fact of our sins and mistakes can blind us from the greater truth that we are still loved by God. As one person once said to me, “I may be a mess, but I’m God’s mess”.  To see our lives with the eyes of faith is to see the beauty in our weakness.

3. How we see our life.  Last year I was meeting with a couple for marriage prep.  The bride-to-be was married before and had 3 daughters under the age of 10 and her husband died in an accident. During one of our meetings we had a candid conversation about that experience and I asked her how it impacted her.  She told me that she would not want anyone to have to experience what she has gone through, but she would not trade what she has learned and who she has become for anything. No doubt it was a terrible event in her life, but when looked at through the eyes of faith, she was able to appreciate that there was beauty there.  Now Fr. Aaron gets to do there wedding… Not that I’m bitter about that or anything…

We may have may have 20/20 vision, but sometimes we are blind to the beauty around us.  We may have glasses but we fail to see God in our lives. If we do not see with the occhi della fede, then we may suffer from spiritual blindness.  As we prepare to approach Jesus in this Eucharist he asks us “What do you want me to do for you?” May we respond with Bartimaeus “Master, I want to see.”

Master, I want to see.