Seeing With a Spiritual Sight
“Can you see the signs of grace in your life?” Exasperated, I clicked on the email, sure that I had deleted this very same email seconds earlier. Indeed, I had already read the email, or at least vaguely skimmed the overall message. Why do emails have to randomly duplicate, I wondered to myself, reading the subject line again. In that moment, I realized that the email’s title reminded me of an instruction I had received several weeks ago from a priest about paying attention to God’s grace present in my life. Perhaps this duplicate phenomenon was more a calling of God to remind me of this instruction rather than just annoying me with another email. In moments like these, I find I can be just as blind as Bartimaeus in today’s Gospel, needing Jesus to come and heal my spiritual sight.
At first glance, the Gospel about Jesus healing the blind man, Bartimaeus, serves as an astounding story of physical healing. I admit that the first few times I listened to this story, I heavily focused on how easily Jesus cures Bartimaeus’ affliction. Yet this Gospel story offers us another lens that we can apply to our own life. To quote Bishop Barron, “Jesus was a physical healer, no question about it. . . The Gospels preserve all kinds of examples of Jesus healing people physically. But I think the reason why some got into the Gospel so prominently was they [Christians] also saw them as symbolically resonate of a deeper healing” (Homily on September 8, 2024). The deeper healing of Bartimaeus is a spiritual healing. Bartimaeus is sitting right outside Jericho, which is the city that the Israelites must conquer to fully enter the Promised Land in the Old Testament (see Joshua 6). Even in Jesus’ time, the city was known for catering to the rich and powerful as an oasis. Jericho is symbolic of a sinful and worldly city choosing to live away from God, and Bartimaeus’ presence outside its walls recalls the spiritual blindness of a sinful life. Before Jesus heals him, Bartimaeus is unable to see Jesus, just as a person who is caught up in sin and worldly interests is often unable to see God at work in their life. As Jesus heals the blindness, Bartimaeus is ultimately able to see Jesus and thus follow Him with his new Spiritual Sight.
In this world of busy-ness, there is so much to distract us from seeing Jesus. We might not be living explicitly sin-filled or worldly lives, but we can quickly close our eyes to Jesus and signs of grace. We often choose a sports game over attending Mass. Or we might avoid Bible studies and other faith groups that help nourish our learning and community in favor of watching the latest TV show. There are many scenarios, but fortunately, our tradition as Catholics offers us examples of people who have encountered this same world of distractions and have lived informed by Spiritual Sight. These people are the saints whom we celebrate every year on November 1st.
A saint can mean many things. The English word derives from the Latin word that means ‘holy’ or ‘consecrated’. In the New Testament, the Greek word used, hagioi (ἁγίοι), can mean separate from common use. When we consider the saints of the Church, we can see that each saint lived a life separate from the common world. For example, St. Francis of Assisi is well known as the beggar saint, dramatically choosing to live in dire poverty. In more recent times, we can look at the life of Bl. Chiara Badano who endured her suffering from illness with great joy. It’s easy to forget that these people walked the same earth we walk, but from their lives we can see what it means to see signs of grace and live with a Spiritual Sight focused on Jesus, on God. The example of the saints remind us to keep looking for those signs of grace that reveal God at work right now in our lives. And they offer us friendship to take the next step.
In the Gospel, Bartimaeus desires to see Jesus. Do we desire to receive this Spiritual Sight in our lives, to see how grace is working? In my own experience, there are times when I just don’t see where God is in anything that I’m doing. That’s when my friendship with the saints reminds me to ask for Jesus’ healing, ask to see what I am missing, and in turn trust that God is indeed at work.