✞ One begins to really live, when he begins to be a victim.
“Blindness of the spirit” (Mark 10:46b-52)
My little Mary, in today’s Gospel, blind Bartimaeus who has heard about Me, hearing the noise of the people announcing My arrival, listens to My footsteps as they approach, and without any reticence with regard to the crowd, he cries out to Me: “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.” He believes in My intervention. He knows that he is poor in his condition, not only because of his blindness, but because of his state as a sinner, and that the light for his healing and liberation can only come from Me, from the Lord; his cry, therefore, vehemently implores Me.
In the face of such faith, such desire, God is without walls of defense, He surrenders to his request for grace, which is granted to him so that he may have sight, and how sweet the vision of the Lord’s face found by his first gaze. Many will ask: “How is it that Bartimaeus was healed, while many other blind people are not given the gift of sight?” This miracle was a sign to testify to posterity that light is God [God is light], and is given by Him alone, if it is sought—both the visual light of the body and also, and above all, that which is infused into the spirit.
Blindness expresses itself in many ways, not only physical blindness, but interior blindness: in the blindness of thought that has no glimmer of light and does not know how to recognize the presence of God in things, the blindness of the heart that does not know how to love and recognize the good, the blindness of the soul that does not believe and does not know how to open itself to the spirit. How many blind people there are who see with their eyes, but who have no light in their innermost being, who do not have the radiance of any feelings of pity, of empathy towards others, for whom there is not the brightness of a spark enabling them to recognize the action of heaven in their own experience.
This occurs when there is no interior humility, when people do not know how to see and recognize themselves as poor sinners needing the redemptive salvation of Christ, that redemptive salvation which alone can lead a person to cross over, opening again from such blindness to the light of divine teaching, which becomes the path to the infinite radiance of the Kingdom. However, when there is no search, no desire, no listening, when a person thinks that they do not need to be saved, when they exclude God and do not regard Him as the architect of their own redemption, they remain blind.
Today’s humanity is immersed in blindness, groping in the darkness. It believes that it sees, but it does not see. It no longer knows how to recognize either the good or the beautiful, or hope for the future, thereby falling into every precipice of evil. Submerged within this dark humanity, a hope still lights up: there are many small lights that, similar to fireflies in the night, give clarity around them and allow those who approach them to be able to see. These are the little loving souls who reflect the brightness of God, a Light that they receive from Him because they seek it, invoke it, desire it, believing in the Lord. They become a beacon for the many who, even in their darkness, open their eyes again by means of their trail [of light] that allows them to continue on a straight path.
How many blind people do you have around you, children? How many are not believers and are in the darkness, without any faith? What can you do so that they would regain the light? Like Bartimaeus, become their voice that cries out, that begs for the sight of the spirit. The more you become small and poor in yourselves, raising yourselves up in divine things, also abandoning, like Bartimaeus, the cloak of your security, of your assumptions, in order to throw yourselves into the arms of the Father with the faith that you profess, the more you become luminous with that Light which stands out and gives brightness to all those blind souls whom I see; and I will be able to bring them to Myself to heal them, so that they, too, may see my Holy Face again.
My children, do not give up. Continue to call out to Me for them as well: “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.”
I bless you.