Why is Bartimaeus important to us?
To understand him, we need to go backtrack a little. There are two episodes of blindness that frame this home stretch of Jesus’ life. Just after the revelation that He is the Messiah or the Christ, the first case of blindness presented itself. Jesus healing of the man born blind was done in stages. At first, the blind man saw thing indistinctly—people looked like walking trees—and only after placing His hands over the eye that the blind man began to see clearly. This healing process reflects the understanding of the Disciples. They have come to realise that Jesus is the Messiah but failed to recognise that His leadership involves the sacrifice of His life as a ransom for all. You remember last week, the two brothers aspired to the glory associated with kingship but they have not fully grasped the implication of drinking the chalice of Jesus’ sorrow. In contrast, as a response to faith, Bartimaeus’ healing was straightforward. However, unlike the rich young man’s hesitation, Bartimaeus cast aside his cloak, symbolic of his detachment, to follow Jesus.
Blindness is definitely more than physical. For most of us, seeing is believing but in the case of Bartimaeus, believing is seeing who Jesus is. As the Little Prince said, ”And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye”. In fact, the Gospel readings in the last couple of weeks have all been lined up to help us appreciate the finer details of discipleship—details that are often invisible to the eye. How to be great? It is to be a servant or even to be a slave. How to be first? It is to be last. How to find ourselves? It is to lose ourselves. How to accumulate more? It is to give away more.
These are just some paradoxes that throws a spanner into our status quo. Everywhere we go, we are told that to be the best or to be at top of the pile, you require prestige, you flaunt your wealth or you need sex appeal. Like Bartimaeus, all these shout out at us, drowning our little voice that cries out to God for help.
Indeed, this road to conversion is long and takes time. It would be such a wonderful blessing if we can be like Bartimaeus that the more the world tries to bully us into succumbing to its snares—of lust, power and possession—the more we shout, like Bartimaeus, to God for assistance. But, I think many of us are more like the first man born blind. We can see but not clearly. We know of God but hardly do we know God. We follow Him but almost reluctantly and only to look out for the advantages that comes from following Him.
Whether we know it or not, many of us do buy into Peter’s idea that the Messiahship of Jesus is glory without the Cross. We think of God in terms of prosperity blessing. But, without the Cross it is impossible to understand who Jesus truly is and what it means to follow Him. It is akin spending with a credit card. The pain of payment comes later and even then we can further postpone the pain by transferring our credit balance to another bank. The point is this—we all want the glory without the sacrifice. Hence, just as the Disciples needed to see more clearly, we need to be converted to Calvary before we can reach the summit of the Resurrection.
Why is that hard to be Bartimaeus? One of the most difficult aspects of conversion to discipleship today is telling truth in an age of political correctness. It is with reasons that the current generation is labelled either as snowflake or strawberry—easily bruised and incapable of tough working conditions. They are raised in ways that give them an inflated sense of uniqueness and are therefore entitled. Whether we recognise it or not, the age of entitlement when wrapped with the cloak of victimhood, makes for a lethal combination to faith and its response in discipleship. Now, ever since Adam blamed Eve, society has always needed a safety valve of blame to deal with its imperfection, caused by sin, no doubt. The safety valve is found through blaming and the most convenient targets are those considered less than normal the less than normal—the lame, the blind, the weak or anyone who is abnormal—they are convenient scapegoats for society’s ills. Blame them when things go awry. We do it all the time. There are lot of break-ins in our housing estate. Must be the Indonesians or Banglas.
Christianity changed that when Jesus Himself became the Victim, the one who took upon Himself the sins of the world. His acceptance of the poor, the widow and the orphans drew them into the circle of normal. However, what has happened is that it has become fashionable to be a victim but not for altruistic or noble reasons. Instead, victimhood is worn as a badge of honour that has allowed the victim to victimise other. How? When you have difficulties dealing with a multinational, one of the most effective weapons in your hands is to publish publicly your experience and blame it on any one of “isms”, racism or the racist policies of the multinational and that will often shame the entity to retreat and concession.
The problem with this kind of victimhood is, if something were to go wrong, it is no longer the Cross that we have to bear but rather, someone is to be blamed. Why is God like that? How come I have to suffer? Or blame the parents. I am a killer because my parents did not hug me enough. Furthermore, this ignoble kind of victimhood makes for discomfort if one does not recognise, sympathise, tolerate and finally embrace the cause of solving the victim’s problems. One will be accused of heartlessness. Suckers that we are, we fall easily for the victim underdog. Just look at how Najib is now presented by his daughter, as a man wronged by an ungrateful country. The nation is made to feel guilty for its ingratitude. No one likes to be accused of being ungrateful and definitely, with him being a victim, that is bound to tug a few heart-strings. Poor thing. How can?
I have no beef with Najib but what implication will this debilitating form of victimhood have for discipleship? If we are perpetual victims, always wronged and unjustly treated, what does it mean to follow Christ? All we need is a little suffering and we cave into self-pity. Why? We have been victimised.
Christians are not that kind of self-pitying victims, even though we might be victimised, persecuted, done to or even killed. Instead, the Catholic Mass is locus where, when we offer up the Victim, the only perfect sacrifice acceptable to the Father, each one of us, unite our suffering with Him. His Cross is the only one that makes sense in this world damaged by sin. The Cross makes our sacrifices worthwhile and gives meaning to our discipleship. When Christ redeemed us through His sacrifice on the Cross, He did not come to banish pain and suffering but He transformed them into motives of virtues and occasions of merit so that if we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him. The Cross makes it possible to follow Him, like Bartimaeus and later the Eleven, through thick and thin, even when we pay with our lives. As Maximillian Kolbe reminds us, “Let us remember that love lives through sacrifice and is nourished by giving. Without sacrifice there is no love”. Without the Cross, we may languish in victimhood and will be no more than just fair-weathered disciples.
