“As an aspirant, my apostolate was at Nirmal Hriday (Kalighat). The first few days, I was so afraid to touch the old people. One man had a very big wound on his leg and it was full of maggots. I was so afraid. Then Mother passed that way. She saw me standing with the dressing tray and struggling without knowing what to do, and she knew I was afraid….She held my hand, took the tray from my hand, and she started to clean the wound, and took out all the worms. Then she put the forceps in my hand and she held my hands and made me clean the wound. I did a little, and then Mother continued and finished the dressing by herself. With that my fears disappeared. Then Mother ran and got a cup of warm milk for the patient and made me pour that milk into his mouth little by little, and Mother stood close by watching me and smiled. Then we moved on to another patient, and Mother herself did for each patient whatever was necessary….From that day onward I had no fear. Mother remained at my side that whole morning teaching me.” (Quoted in Mother Teresa: A Call to Mercy, edited by Brian Kolodiejchuk, MC, p 103)
Eyes to See
Today’s Gospel is the story of Jesus healing Bartimaeus. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem before the crucifixion. He is in Jericho, geographically the “bottom of the hill” that ended in Golgotha. Scholars describe Jericho as both the lowest point below sea level in Jesus’ active world and the point at which Jesus began to walk to Jerusalem for the Passover of his death and resurrection. It is interesting that Jesus begins this walk uphill with doing what he has done so many times in his three years of ministry: He experiences the pain of someone who is marginal and in need and responds with compassion and healing.
Luke doesn’t name Bartimaeus, but the rendition of the story in Mark does (Mark 10: 46-52). Bartimaeus is blind and calls out loudly to Jesus, “Son of David, have pity on me!” Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus answers, “I want to see.” Jesus heals him and Bartimaeus “began to follow him.”
As various theologians and homilists look at this story and others of Jesus giving people sight, they invite application for us by essentially asking these questions: “How are we blind?” “What healing of our blindness do we need?” “What is it in our world that we do not see?”
These questions have poked at me this week as people in the US continue to process election results and as COVID infections climb exponentially in many areas of the country (including my own).
Hearts to Love
As the church moves toward the end of the liturgical year and the Solemnity of Christ the King, today we begin reading Revelation. In the first part of Revelation, John’s vision pronounces prophetic judgment on seven churches. The first one is Ephesus, traditionally John’s own church community. In the early days of Christianity, it was a model church, full of zeal and efficacy. Various traditions have the Blessed Mother spending her last years there, sharing John’s home, and perhaps even living next door to Mary Magdalene.
But, by the time Revelation and John’s three letters were written around AD 95, the church at Ephesus was racked by division. Seeds of Gnosticism had been sown there, and the church, though strong in faith, was filled with factions about how that faith was to be lived. Hence, the line in today’s reading, “Yet I hold this against you: you have lost the love you had at first. Realize how far you have fallen. Repent, and do the works you did at first.”
As I began to pray from the readings this week, that phrase “you have lost the love you had at first” jumped out at me from the page. All week those words have called to me, challenged me. For it seems to me, that in many ways, even very faithful Catholics have been so caught up in politics and pandemic that we have “lost the love we had”.
Where have I lost love? Where have my friends lost love? Where has the universal church lost love? Important questions to ask in prayer.
Learning to Love in Different Conditions
The story at the beginning of today’s reflection is from a Missionaries of Charity sister. As she mentions, it happened when she was an aspirant—discerning if she had a vocation to join in Mother Teresa’s work. The story came to mind as appropriate for today’s readings applied to today’s world.
Our community is suddenly in the “red zone” with COVID. My work is back all virtual. This weekend, attendance was substantially down at mass. Understandably. Last week I caught a cold and thus had a personal COVID scare, since so many of the symptoms are the same. I had to wait two days to get tested. While I waited, I racked my brain for who I might have unwittingly infected. My test was negative. But the experience gave my prayers around these scriptures a deeper pondering. The situation made me acutely aware that normal means of showing love can possibly be dangerous–yet simply retreating into our homes to care for ourselves can lead us to self-absorption, the opposite of love.
This is a time when just about everybody has anxiety about something—maybe COVID, maybe the economy, maybe politics, maybe loneliness through the winter, maybe the Church—but fear is all around us.
The omnipresent fear and the radically unusual COVID safety measures put us in a strange new world. We are wisely told to stay home, stay away from crowds. But, after six months with no end in sight, how do we prevent myopia and self-absorption? How do we manage the tendency to be blind to needs and opportunities around us? Or blind to the possible harm that doing an otherwise normal loving thing might create?
Like the young woman who described what she learned from Mother Teresa’s combination of accepting her fear and leading her beyond it, I need to find a way beyond fear and resulting sloth. My conversations with others tell me I am not alone.
Today’s readings instruct me. Bartimaeus was not afraid to cry out to Jesus. Jesus was not afraid to encounter and heal him. Then he followed Jesus. From Bartimaeus I can learn to be bold and take at least calculated risks. Jesus can heal me of my fear and the blindness that fear can create.
John’s admonition to the church at Ephesus instructs me. Both here and in John’s letters, he names Love as the solution to changing conditions caused then by persecution and its resulting fear.
It is not hard for me to put myself in the place of the young woman whom Mother Teresa taught. I would have been afraid of not knowing what to do and how to do it, afraid of causing pain, afraid of being physically repulsed by maggots in a wound, afraid that this vocation I wanted would be impossible to me.
Yet all it took was ONE MORNING of patient example and “made me” application for the aspirant to get past her fear. ONE MORNING to recover a heart for love.
Prayer:
St. Mother Teresa, you were prudent, but you did not respond to need with fear, nor did you let others respond with fear. You loved beyond fear. Lead me, guide me to prudently love beyond fear. St. John, you saw the harm of polarity and fear in your beloved community at Ephesus and prescribed Love as a solution. Lead me, guide me to live Love as a solution to polarities today. Jesus, you saw Bartimaeus, healed him, and made him a disciple. Heal me of fear-induced blindness, then lead me, guide me as your disciple to prudently, yet boldly, Love. Holy Spirit, give us all hearts for Love. ONE MORNING of training, Lord. ONE MORNING. Send us each ONE MORNING of your instruction through someone to change our fears and our hearts–and then our world.
