Robert Barron - Answering God's Call
Peace be with you. Friends, we're at the 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time. The year goes by fast, doesn't it? We're almost at the end of the liturgical year. The readings, it's a rare thing when all three of them do have a golden thread running through, which is the idea of the call of the primacy of God's action in the life of salvation. Whenever we start thinking, okay, this is my project, so I'm going to work on my spiritual life and I'm going to get in a better friendship with God, or I'm going to read these books and I'll make some progress, you're on the wrong path. On the biblical reading, grace always comes first. It's always God's action, now listen, with which we cooperate.
So, I mean, God wants us cooperating with His grace. He doesn't want us to become puppets. No, but He acts first. And if that's not the case, then ipso facto, we're on the bad path if we think I'm launching this process. Okay. So first reading from the prophet Jeremiah, here's what we hear. He's talking about the exiles of Israel, and this is a big theme in the Old Testament. The northern tribes of Israel were exiled by the Assyrians, and then about a century and a half later, the southern tribes are threatened by the Babylonians. They're eventually carried off into exile. So deep in the Old Testament consciousness is the idea of someday the exiles will come back. Someday, all the tribes will be gathered again in Israel. So here's Jeremiah now expressing it.
"Behold, I will bring them back..." This is God speaking now through Jeremiah. "Behold, I will bring them back from the land of the north. I will gather them from the ends of the world with the blind and the lame in their midst, the mothers and those with child, they shall return as an immense throng". Yes, the exiles will come back, but it will be God's doing. Now again, the cooperation, the exiles could say, oh no, Lord, we're not going to go back. We don't want to cooperate with you. No, of course He's calling on our powers and so on, but He takes the initiative.
Now listen, in the second reading, which is from that marvelous letter of the Hebrews. I've not been really focusing on it, but get out your Bibles when you can and go through this text. Try to find a good commentary on it because it's complex, but it's such an important text. But just one thing I want to focus on here. He's talking about priesthood, about the temple priesthood and by extension, the priesthood of Jesus Christ. Listen, "No one takes this honor upon himself, but only when called by God just as Aaron was".
So it's a little point. Isn't that rather obvious? Well, no. I go back to my years in seminary formation. So I was a professor for a long time. I was a rector for three years when my job was to determine whether these guys were properly disposed toward the priesthood. Well, I would be part of interviews very often. When I was rector, I interviewed every student as they're coming in and we'd ask about their vocational call, et cetera. It was always a bad sign if a student said something like, "Well, I've always wanted to be a priest since I was a kid. I determined this is what I want to do. This is the path that I want to take".
Well, okay, but it sounds like you're in charge of your life here. It sounds like you're setting the agenda, you're setting the tone. The right answer when we'd ask someone about their vocation was, "I am feeling called by God to this path". And again, vocation, right? Vocatio. It's a calling. There's someone, listen, outside of your own ego that is summoning you and very often against your will. There's a resistance to it at first. Watch that all throughout the Bible from Abraham to Jeremiah, and to Peter and Paul. There's a resistance to it, but the call comes from outside.
See, because as long as you're in charge, then it's the project of your little ego and it's going to be far less than God wants it to be. Let me say that again. If your ego is in charge of the project, it will necessarily be less than what God wants. See, God... think of Jesus and getting into Peter's boat when he says, "Duc in altum," go out into the depths. See Peter, you've been messing around in the shallows way too long. That's your little ego project. Whatever it is. Whatever it is, and no matter how successful it is, if it's your little ego project, it's the shallows. I want you out into the depths.
See, so now Peter has to respond to a call beyond his own ego. And so here, this is ancient, the priesthood, no one takes it upon himself, like this is my idea. I've been summoned by a higher power. Okay. Now with those two in mind, Jeremiah from Hebrews, now we have this. It's really one of my favorite stories from Mark. It's in this pivotal chapter 10 when Jesus is now making his way toward Jerusalem, which means toward the cross. The story of the blind Bartimaeus, and now watch for the same motif. "As Jesus was leaving Jericho with his disciples in a sizable crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son of Timaeus, sat by the roadside begging".
Every word is worthy of commentary here. Jesus is in Jericho. The attentive biblical reader knows he's therefore in this arena of sin. When the Israelites come into the Promised Land, they conquer Jericho, remember, by processing liturgically around the walls, blowing the trumpets and down come the walls of Jericho. It's symbolic of the sin that's conquered by grace, and so it's not surprising that Jesus will confront trouble and difficulty there. This Bartimaeus is a blind man. Blind people can't see where they're going. Blind people are lost.
Now, pause here for a second. If the problem of the spiritual order is my ego project is in the lead, in a way, blindness is not an entirely bad thing because you're not now in control of your life. You are apt to look elsewhere for direction. There's something, in other words, salutary about admitting blindness. As long as, hey, I'm great. I can see fine. My eagle eyes know just where to go, and I'm off. Well, Bartimaeus is blind and he knows it. Good, good. And he sits by the roadside begging. In command of his life? Hardly. Got everything he needs? No way. He's a blind beggar. So are we all. Fellow sinners, so are we all in the spiritual order. We're blind and we're beggars. And so he cries out hearing it's Jesus of Nazareth. Listen to him. "Jesus, son of David, have pity on me".
I think it's so moving that we basically repeat Bartimaeus's cry at every mass. What he says in the Greek here is eleison me, eleison me. That sound familiar? Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison. At the beginning of every mass, we compel everybody at the mass to enter into the space of Bartimaeus blind and begging. We don't come into mass with this kind of blithe confidence that we are in control of our lives. We got our eagle eyes open and we got all the things we need and we're marching along. And boy, isn't it great maybe if Jesus is a wonderful accompaniment to our ego project? No, that ain't going to work. That is not going to work. Rather, we all begin by acknowledging... We're like Bartimaeus Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy on me, have pity on me. I'm not in command. I'm waiting for someone else to take control of my life.
Okay, now watch what happens. "Many rebuked him telling him to be silent, but he kept calling out all the more, son of David had pity on me". That happens a lot too, doesn't it, in our society because boy do we love people that are in command, people that got it together and they're smart and they're accomplished and they found their own path. And so if you're a blind beggar, you're saying, "I don't really know where I'm going. I'm kind of lost. I'm helpless. I'm a sinner". Well, the society will say, "Come on, get it together. What's the matter with you"? We'll be opposed in the same way Bartimaeus was. But to his great credit, he keeps crying out, "Son of David, son of David, have pity on me". So then here's the decisive moment. Jesus stopped and said, "Call him".
Now, remember Jeremiah, it's the Lord will bring the exiles back. Remember the letter to the Hebrews? No one becomes a priest on his own, but is called into that life. So here Bartimaeus, and therefore all of us, are called by a higher voice. I think maybe I've explained this to you before, but the Greek word ekklesia, which means church, ecclesiastical comes from that. But the root of that is ek kaleo, to call out from, to call out from, ek kalein. Bartimaeus is being called out of his cramped, blind, helpless life by a higher voice, by a higher power. It's Jesus saying to Peter, right? "Go into the depths". Same thing. He's being summoned, ek kaleoed, into communion with Jesus. That's the church, everybody. It's not a bureaucratic organization, it's a relationship to the one who's called us. Beautiful. He's now being summoned. So they call the blind man saying, "Take courage. Get up. Jesus is calling you". Good, this is the decisive moment.
See, do we say yes to it or we run the other way? That's the question. So Bartimaeus, God bless him, threw aside his cloak, sprang up and came to Jesus. It's that moment, everybody. I don't if you're the President of the United States, I don't care if you're the richest person in the world, I don't care if you realized every one of your stupid little ego dreams, you're a nobody, you're nothing in the spiritual order until Jesus calls you. Now you know who you are. Now you know what to do. Now you know what your life's all about. That's why beautifully, he throws off his cloak. The scholars tell us that there are baptismal overtones here, which I think is very credible because in the ancient church, when you were baptized, you took off your street clothes. You stripped down, and then you went down in the water, and then you were clothed in the white garment. You've got a new life now.
So Bartimaeus takes off his cloak, his old life, and then beautifully, he springs up. Think of this man, blind beggar crouched by the walls of Jericho, his life going nowhere but summoned by Jesus, he has this energy. He springs up, comes to Jesus. And then beautifully how Baptismal this is too. "What do you want me to do for you"? Jesus asks. At every baptism, the priest or the bishop or the deacon, the baptizing minister says, "What name do you give your child"? And they give the name. And then is, "What do you want for this child"? It's the same question. It's the same question. Jesus asked, Bartimaeus, "What do you want"? The blind man replied, "Master. I want to see".
There's a world in that. He'd been blind, didn't know where he's going, lost, hopeless. Having been called, kaleo, into the life of the church of intimacy with Jesus, now he wants the vision of what my life is all about. And Jesus says, "Your faith has saved you," and his sight returns. And then how the story ends to me is always so striking. That's why I say every word of this story matters. "And so he received his sight and followed him on the way". It begins with this man, hopelessly crouching, blind and begging by the walls of Jericho. It ends with someone confidently walking the way behind Jesus. He knows who he is now because he has been called, "kaleao". He surrendered to the power of God. So it goes with every one of us, and God bless you.