The Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul, June 29, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Robert James Magliula

The Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul, June 29, 2025

• Ezekiel 34:11-16
• 2 Timothy 4:1-8
• John 21:15-19

Today is the commemoration of the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul. They both died in Rome during the persecution under Nero in 64 A.D. According to tradition, Paul was granted the right of a Roman citizen to be beheaded by a sword, but Peter suffered crucifixion, with head downward.  

These two are an unlikely duo. Their paths and opinions more than once divided the Church. In the early days of birthing the Christian community, nobody really knew what to do next. Various things had been set in motion in a rather haphazard way. Mark had not yet written his book. Communities were springing up, and as with all communities, the first resentments and disagreements were surfacing. Danger also begins to appear with the persecution of the new Christian movement, especially from a brilliant lawyer from Tarsus with religious and political clout. The rumor surfaces that this Saul the enemy has changed sides and his name to Paul. He appears in Jerusalem asking to meet with Peter and James, the brother of Jesus. Luke in Acts tells us the local community didn’t believe that he was now a disciple. The second century writer, Onesiphoros, describes Paul as unimpressive. “A man rather small in size, bald-headed, bow legged, with meeting eyebrows, and a large, hooked nose.” Appearances aside, he was a brilliant scholar, sophisticated, politically astute, at home in any society, with the full advantages of full Roman citizenship.  

Peter, unlike Paul, at this stage of his life knew little or nothing about the vast reaches of the Empire. He had no idea what it was like to live in the immense melting-pot of religions and lifestyles. Yet the instinctive conservatism of Peter met the far-seeing vision and boundless energy of Paul to propel the Gospel from one end of the Empire to the other. Immensely different and possessing very different visions of the future they battled their way to what today’s collect calls “a unity in the Spirit.” 

That first encounter in Jerusalem and the relationship between Peter and Paul fascinates us because of their differing gifts, personalities, and roles that provide a pattern of contrasts that were to be important in the formation of the future Church. One of the things they held in common was the difficulty of their ministry. I don’t mean the darkness of their times, their struggles, or the persecution, but the greater difficulty of competing lights. This is what Paul tried to convey to Timothy in our Epistle and Jesus to Peter in today’s Gospel.  

For the youthful Timothy, animated by the zeal of a new convert, ministry and mission were still relatively uncomplicated. It would be some time before he would see, like Paul, that the most demanding discipleship is not a battle with darkness. The far greater threat to the Gospel, and to our faith, is not evil cloaked in darkness, but evil decked in light. Paul’s ministry was conducted in a world of dazzling brilliance. The Roman Empire was at its apex; the religions of Athens and Rome, Israel and Egypt had been around long enough to build firm foundations and impressive cults. Learning was alive, world trade and communication brought people into vibrant contact. Set against the powerful forces of empire, commerce, and culture, Christianity was insignificant. How could a gospel of self-denial and service to others survive in a world of creature comforts and power and not be eclipsed by this competition? This is no less true for us today. 

In part that seems to be Jesus’ message to Peter as well. This is Peter who fled from Jerusalem only weeks earlier from the horror of Jesus’ execution. In this exchange Jesus rescues Peter from his shame for his denial and weakness and makes the past irrelevant. The fact that Peter now knows what it is to come apart makes him a more compassionate leader. He realizes that above all else the Kingdom which Jesus preached was about people: caring for them, building them up, healing them, loving them. That would be Peter’s great gift in the years ahead. This conversation takes place after they have satisfied their appetites with breakfast. Might Jesus be reminding Peter and us that ministry is always more difficult when we are satisfied and can be charmed out of our convictions? 

Life is never quite as simple as we’d like, but it is possible to say that Peter’s gift was of the heart while Paul’s was of the mind. The readings for this feast do not so much emphasize the greatness of these two as their humanity and vulnerability. In the Epistle we catch a glimpse of Paul who is old and tired, worn out by the impossible pace and demands he had set for himself: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.” He may be tired and old, but the self-confidence is still there, and humility was never his strong point. The voice we hear to Timothy is that of the teacher, thinker, the formulator of the faith. 

Martyrdom is less about how we die and more about how and for whom we live. The Christian faith calls us to a life of endurance and perseverance. The lives and deaths of Peter and Paul offer us examples and guidance for our lives today in a world not unlike that of their own day, that desperately needs witnesses to the love of God. Though Peter and Paul disagreed about the Christian mission their common commitment to Christ and the proclamation of the Gospel proved stronger than their differences. The icon for this feast portrays them embracing each other, offering us a much needed image and example of unity in diversity in our polarized world.  

Paul‘s words for us today are timeless: “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead…:  preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching.”  He continues describing not only his day, but ours, where we see the Gospel domesticated and accommodated to support peoples own agenda.  “For the time is coming”, he says, “when people will not endure sound teaching but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.” He reminds us that we must be willing to examine our own lives and choices and not allow ourselves to become so self-confident that we believe that we are incapable of having itching ears as well. He concludes: “As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.  For I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come… Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved His appearing.” 

So let us give thanks today for these two ancestors in the faith, whose work, writings, and witness give us insight and strength for our work and witness.  But perhaps, most of all, for showing us our capacity as human beings to change, to grow and to work together to build God’s Kingdom. +Amen.

The Third Sunday of Easter, May 4, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Robert James Magliula

The Third Sunday of Easter, May 4, 2025

• Acts 9:1-6, (7-20)
• Revelation 5:11-14
• John 21:1-19

John begins today’s gospel (John 21:1-19) by telling us that Jesus “showed himself in this way.” He sets the third appearance of Jesus to his disciples amidst ordinary circumstances. The disciples have returned to their old routines: the same boats, the same nets, the same water, the same work. John gives a lot of small, seemingly unnecessary and even strange details in which Jesus showed himself. I suspect we’ve all returned to the routine of our lives since Easter Day. Perhaps John is pointing us in the direction of where we might recognize resurrection in the small details and routine rhythms of everyday life. 

John tells us that they fished through the darkness, but their nets were empty. The darkness, however, was not just about the night. The darkness was also in the disciples. In the same way, the empty net is not only descriptive of their fishing nets, but also of the disciples themselves. They are as empty as their nets. We all know what it’s like to experience darkness and emptiness especially in the wake of loss. Those are the times when we come to the limits of our own self-sufficiency, with nothing to show for our efforts and nothing left to give. I suspect that Peter, whether he knew it or not, was fishing for answers more than fish, when he returned to his routine. All the others were quick to join him. We can leave the places and even the people of our life, but we can never escape ourselves or our life. Peter may have left Jerusalem, but he could not get away from three years of discipleship, the last supper, the arrest, the denials, the cross, the empty tomb, the house with locked doors. In the context of the failures, losses, and sorrows we have all struggled with the same questions as Peter, looking for some sense of understanding and meaning. When life gets difficult, when we become lost, confused, and afraid, when the changes of life are not what we wanted or think we deserve, we tend to run away. We try to go back to the way it was before, something safe and familiar. Often, we revert to old patterns of behavior and thinking. Even when we know better and do not want to go backwards it seems easier than moving forward. That’s when and where we can expect Jesus to show himself to us. Resurrection doesn’t happen apart from our life but in it. Resurrection is not about escaping life but about becoming alive.

Nets cannot be filled unless they are first emptied. In the same way we can never be filled with Jesus until we are first emptied of ourselves, until we come to recognize our limits. Emptiness is not the end or a failure but a beginning. The miracle begins when the nets are empty. That’s when Jesus, still unrecognized by the disciples, says, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” That’s not so much a question as it is a statement, naming their reality of emptiness.

As soon as Jesus is recognized by the beloved disciple who tells Peter, a naked Peter gets dressed and jumps in the water. Peter’s nakedness is a strange detail, telling us more than that Peter wasn’t wearing any clothes. In our stripped and naked state is when we are most available to respond to Jesus, Peter clothes himself in a hopeful urgency and rushes in toward Jesus. 

What places or circumstances of your life need to be clothed with urgent hope today? What new possibilities would be open to you? How do you need to enliven your outlook on life and the world? Whatever your answers might be they are the places in which Jesus is waiting to show himself to you. John offers us another detail which is important to remember. He says that Jesus is “only about a hundred yards away,” reminding us that wherever we find ourselves, he is always within reach.

When Peter went ashore and saw a charcoal fire, I wonder if he recalled the one where he warmed himself in the High Priest’s courtyard when he denied Jesus? Was he overcome again with regret as we often are with our guilt and betrayals. Whatever Peter might have been thinking or feeling was interrupted by Jesus saying, “Come and have breakfast.” Jesus invites and sustains us even in our guilt, regrets, and betrayals. 

Peter and Jesus then share a conversation about love, freedom, and moving forward. “Do you love me?” Jesus asks Peter, not once but three times. One question for each of Peter’s denials. Three times Peter gives the same answer, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” I have no doubt that Jesus knew that Peter loved him, but I think that Peter needed to know that he loved Jesus. He needed to understand that he was not bound to his past. How many of us also need to hear and experience that again and again? With each question and answer Jesus drew Peter from his past and freed him to become himself and more fully alive. That’s what today’s gospel is about.

Jesus showed himself in the empty nets that were filled with 153 fish, darkness gave way to light, nakedness was clothed with hope, betrayal gave way to welcome, and three denials were forgiven with three affirmations of love. In resurrection we discover that we have a future. It’s a commitment to hope and being reborn. It’s a commitment to creativity, to the Spirit who “makes all things new” (Rev. 21:5). The resurrection event isn’t the end of the story but a new beginning. 

As with the other evangelists, John leaves the resurrection as a story to be continued with something left to do, something more to happen. It’s a call awaiting a response, insisting you and I give existence to more life, for ourselves and others. 

 To be resurrection for another we need to first be resurrection for ourselves by listening deeply, to the hopes, needs, and pain of our own lives and then act to create life for others.  We are the ones to continue the story of resurrection. That’s the way John describes it in today’s gospel with Jesus saying, “Follow me.”  +Amen

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany C, March 2, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Robert James Magliula

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany, March 2, 2025

• Exodus 34:29-35
• 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
• Luke 9:28-36

When they encounter something new or different, my young nieces often ask, “Is it real?” Reality is determined by the five senses. If it cannot be seen, tasted, touched, smelled, or heard then it is not real – at least in this world. We tend to live with a veil that separates the exterior world of tangible, rational information from the inner world of mystery and encounter.

There are moments, however, when that veil is parted, and we stand in what the Celtic tradition calls a “thin place” between heaven and earth, the divine and the human, matter and spirit, the eternal and the temporal. In that thin place the duality of those parings disappears, and we stand in union and wholeness.

The difficulty for us is that, like my young nieces, we often limit our world and our experience to that which is understood and explainable. The senses themselves become the veil that separates us from that other world. Thin places invite us to step outside what we can know and enter the tremendous mystery of God’s presence and love. 

Every year on this day, the season of Epiphany culminates in the Transfiguration. The Church sets it before us as the hinge between the end of Epiphany and the beginning of Lent. It reveals what an unveiled life looks like. In the Transfiguration the glory of divinity is united with humanity. Jesus didn’t become something he was not before that night on the mountain. He manifested what he always was, filled with the glory of God, radiating divine light. Jesus didn’t become something new, but the disciples did. They saw and experienced life and the world as God sees it, showing in humanity the archetypal beauty of its image. Christ revealed who we are and who, by grace, we are to become. He showed the theosis, the deification of human nature.

In a thin place we and our whole world stand in a different light. Jesus led Peter, James, and John to a thin place, where human ears would hear God’s voice, human eyes could see divine light, and human life would be enveloped in the cloud of God’s presence. That experience is the great longing of humanity. They beheld the beauty of their own creation in the image and likeness of God.

This is not simply a story about Peter, James, and John. It is descriptive of Christ’s encounter with all humanity. We too are called and invited to step through the parted veil. Transfiguration is all around us. Jesus is always leading us to the thin places of our life. We don’t often talk about these experiences. Like Peter, James, and John, we keep silent, not because those encounters are not real. Rather, because they are too real for words. Words could never describe the experience and would only diminish the mystery of the encounter. Each is distinct and unrepeatable.  They are moments of pure grace. We cannot make them happen. We can only be there when it does happen. It’s a moment of complete presence and union. Everything belongs. Nothing has been lost or left out. 

It’s not so much about what we see but how we see. Transfigured eyes do not deny or ignore the circumstances of our life or world. Sometimes our life is veiled in our failures, our fears, our forgetting. Other times the veil of grief and despair, ignorance, or the choices we have made leave us in darkness. Most of us, I think, seek God in the circumstances of life. We want God to show up and do something. But it’s not about the circumstances of life. It’s about us. 

At some point we must begin to discover the God who is beyond the circumstances. Life on the surface keeps us judging the circumstances. The answer is found in depth, intimacy, and the vulnerability of the interior journey. We do not need to see new things. We need to see the same old things with new eyes. We do not need to escape the circumstances of our life. We need to be more fully present to those circumstances. This transfigured vision, is what allows us to face, endure, and respond to the circumstances of our life and world. It is why we can be unafraid. 

On the mountain Peter wants to build dwelling places, wants to preserve the experience. We often are tempted to do the same, but that would only keep us in the past. To the extent we cling to the past we close ourselves to the future God offers. Jesus, Peter, James, and John came back down the mountain, but they took the vision with them. Transfigured moments change us, sustain us, prepare, encourage, and guide us into the future regardless of the circumstances we face. When you consider recent events in our country and our world it seems our lives and the world are more disfigured than transfigured.

 These events do not negate the glory of God that fills this world. Instead, they reveal that far too often we are a people “weighed down with sleep’ like Peter, John, and James. They struggled between sleep and wakefulness. The spiritual journey is always a battle between falling asleep and staying awake, between absence and presence, darkness and light. Sleepiness is a spiritual condition. It is a form of blindness to the beauty and holiness of the world, other people, and ourselves. It is what allows us to do violence to one another and ourselves.

The Transfiguration of Christ shows us who we are. It reveals our origin, our purpose, and the end to which we must aim. It is not just an event in history, a happening that begins and ends. It is a condition and way of being. The Transfiguration reveals a present reality already within us and the world. 

The disciples experienced the transfiguration because they stayed awake despite the weight of sleep. Regardless of how our life gets veiled the light of divinity is never extinguished but only covered up. This is why we need Lent, the season of unveiling, to discover the ways in which our lives have become veiled. The veils of our life can only be removed when we first know our life to be veiled. If you want to know the ways in which your life has become veiled go to the places of contradiction. Search out the places of struggle and conflict. Look for the ways in which you are living less than who you really want to be. 

Peter, James, and John saw for the first time what has always been. Humanity can never build a dwelling place for God. It is God who makes humanity the dwelling place of divinity. The whole of creation participates in the glory of God. It is there that Christ reveals who we are and who, by grace, we are to become. Transfiguration invites us to wipe the sleep from our eyes, behold what we are, and become what we see. +Amen

The Fourth Sunday of Advent C - December 22, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Robert James Magliula

The Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 22, 2024

• Micah 5:2-5a
• Hebrews 10:5-10
• Luke 1:39-55)

Meister Eckhart, the 14th century German Dominican wrote: 

We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I also do not give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time. When the Son of God is begotten in us. 

This morning, Meister Eckhart challenges us to answer his questions. How will we give birth to the Son of God in our time and in our culture? Perhaps, the first and better question is, Will we? Will we give our consent? Will we say, like Mary, “Let it be? “ 

The Annunciation to the Theotokos, the God-Bearer, is an annunciation to the entire human race that the Son and Word of God has become incarnate. What happened physically in Mary is meant to happen spiritually in us. Eckhart’s questions invite us to see humanity, and not Bethlehem, as the true birthplace of God. How amazing is that?! God has chosen humanity to give birth, to give life, to make real, God in this world. That says a lot about what God thinks of us. So often we diminish ourselves when we say, “I’m only human.” But God looks at us and says, “Humanity, created in my image and likeness! They shall be the ones through whom, by whom, and in whom my Son will be born.” 

I suggest that Mary’s experience has some pointers to open us up this morning to being God-Bearers. Once in a sermon, I heard a caution given, that I have never forgotten. The preacher said that in our rush to make the men and women of the biblical drama special, we miss the power of God’s actions---that God acts through ordinary human beings like you and me. Connecting our small stories with the larger stories of God can only be done through the flesh and blood realities of our lives. We must be prepared to hear its sacredness through its humanness---not despite it.   

Mary was a normal teenager who lived in an obscure village, in a nearly forgotten part of the Roman Empire.  She was engaged to a man, Joseph. Nowhere does it describe her as possessing qualities of leadership or intelligence or faith or beauty that would have set her apart for the unique call that Gabriel offered.  In all respects, Mary was a girl living her life, day by day, as best she could, in a community of ordinary people.   

Consider the moment of the Annunciation when the intrusion of the angel into Mary’s life utterly changed it. When Gabriel made his invitation, Mary doesn’t ask about the future or the consequences on her life. Her only question was a simple and logical one. She knew how babies were made. She wanted to know how her part would work. She assumes that God knows God’s job and will do it. Unlike many of us, she is concerned about what is hers to deal with. She doesn’t get lost in the past or future, which belong to God. Because she did not clutter herself up with second guessing God, she could be open to cooperating with God’s plan. Her yes to God was a blanket acceptance in faith of whatever would come in her life. Our own faith and trust in God need to be more like that since we will never in this life come to understand the reason for all that happens to us. God’s way of dealing with us is through collaboration, not dictatorship. Knowing our hesitations, doubts, and fears, God waits in both the crucial and the trivial moments of our lives for us to say yes.  

Mary most certainly had plans for her life. Marriage was on the horizon for her. We all make plans. Most nights when I go to bed, I already know what I will do the next day. I get up at the same time each morning and follow the same routine. My calendar tells me where I will be, when, and what I will do for at least the next nine months. I’ve planned my life. I suspect that to some degree your life might be like that too.  

During our time of Contemplative days a few weeks ago, which were filled with several unplanned events, I was struck by an insight I remembered a directee sharing with me. She said that on most days, we humans have the tendency to not live by faith, but by our plans. We can get through most days without faith. We plan our life, and we live our plan. Faith doesn’t really enter it until our plans get interrupted and the impossible happens. I suspect that’s often what’s going on when we ask someone to pray for us or another asks us to pray for them. Our plans have been interrupted. What Mary never expected or planned happened. We hear that in her question to the angel, “How can this be?” Haven’t there been times when we’ve also asked: “How can this be?”  

It might be the last thing you ever wanted to happen, or it might be something you had hoped and dreamed for all your life. Regardless, the impossible showed up and interrupted our plans. That interruption asks us to make an offering and that’s very different from a plan. Plans are about the future. An offering is about the present moment. Plans are made with expectations of an outcome. We plan to get what we want. An offering is made without expectations and without the need to control the outcome. Plans set limitations. Offerings hold unknown possibilities.  

When Gabriel, the messenger of the impossible, shows up Mary doesn’t try to understand or rationalize what’s happening. That’s just more planning. Instead, she makes an offering. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Every time we say “Let it be with me according to your word” we relinquish control, we surrender to the Mystery, we entrust ourselves to the Unknowing, and we open the womb of our heart to God’s presence. 

I don’t want us to be naïve about the offering Mary made. I can easily imagine that even as she makes her offering, she’s asking herself, “What will happen to me now? Will Joseph believe any of this? What will the neighbors say?” Her offering is very risky. Remember, in her time and culture, pregnancy for a betrothed woman was considered adultery punishable by death. It put her in a vulnerable place without any guarantee of the outcome.  That’s true for any offering you or I might make. Her “Yes” was just her first step. Mary’s offering is followed by another offering when she goes to her cousin Elizabeth as we heard in our gospel today. Mary sets out in haste to visit her cousin, who is bearing an equally unexpected child. At the sound of Mary’s greeting John, the unborn Forerunner, leaps for joy in Elizabeth’s womb –greeting the unborn Messiah.  

Luke offers no information about the three months Mary’s spends with Elizabeth. His sole focus is on the greetings that take place, between these two women and their unborn sons. Sacred iconography portrays this greeting as one of an embrace. Elizabeth recognizes and embraces the divinity carried inside Mary. Elizabeth greets salvation.  

In many ways our own lives are a series of unplanned circumstances and greetings. Every day we greet one another – family, friends, colleagues, strangers. Every day we greet the circumstances of our lives – joys, sorrows, successes, disappointments, losses, the mundane and the exciting. Every one of those greetings and circumstances are pregnant with new life and the possibilities of making an offering of love, compassion, forgiveness, reconciliation, healing, joy, beauty, wholeness. The greetings and unplanned events of our lives are pregnant with the divine, with salvation. How will we greet the next person we see? How will we receive the most recent unplanned circumstance of our lives? Will we recognize,  greet, and embrace the divine, our salvation? 

 When God accepts our surrender to the divine will, we are apt to feel not honored but abandoned. Mary was able to recognize God’s favor and delight in her, even as God reached down and interrupted her plans. She blesses God for the amazing thing that is happening in and through her. She places her blessedness into the context of God’s will. She is not concerned with the joy or the sorrow that her motherhood will bring. She sees from God’s perspective what looks to the world as revolution. In this disruption to her plans, she sees and sings of God’s faithfulness and mercy. 

In her Song of Praise, another offering is made. When she gives birth to Jesus and treasures and ponders all the shepherds tell her, another offering is made. When she places her newborn son in the hands of the old priest, Simeon, another offering is made. When she stands at the foot of the cross, another offering is made. Mary offered. Offering after offering after offering. What if we lived more like that? 

I’m not suggesting that you should completely give up planning, but what if we held our plans a bit more loosely? What if we met each person and circumstance of our life asking ourselves, “What’s the offering I can make in this place at this time?” Faith is about making an offering and letting go of the outcome. What might that look like in your life today? What’s the offering being asked of you? Whatever that offering is, like Mary, we will bear and give birth to the divine within us.  +Amen.

The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost B - October 27, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Robert James Magliula

The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 25 B, October 27, 2024

Jeremiah 31:7-9

Hebrews 7:23-28
Mark 10:46-52

No one chooses to be blind. Bartimaeus gives the obvious answer to Jesus’ question when he says: “My teacher, let me see again.” This Gospel holds a universal story that every one of us experiences even if our physical vision is 20/20, because it’s about more than physical seeing or blindness. I think perhaps the deeper question we need to ask ourselves is whether we really want to see.

Do we really want to see the reality of our lives, who we are and who we are not? Do we really want to see the needs of our neighbor or the marginalized? Do we really want to see the injustices around us? Do we really want to see who Jesus is and not just who we want him to be? True seeing is more than simply observing with our physical eyes. It implies relationship and a deeper knowing. Such seeing is not without risk. If we really want to see, then we must be willing to change and be changed. We must be willing to leave behind what is to receive what might be.

Sometimes that risk is too much so we turn a blind eye. This is not a physical but a spiritual condition. For most of us life is neither all seeing nor all blindness. It was that way for Bartimaeus too. Remember, Bartimaeus asks to “see again.” At the end of the story, we are told that he “regained his sight.” He had known darkness, and he had known light. He had vision, and he had been blind. Both are a reality for Bartimaeus and for us.

We can identify our own life when we see his life in three stages. First, Bartimaeus can see, then he is blind, sitting and begging on the roadside. Finally, he regains a new and different way of seeing. This is a pattern of spiritual growth we see throughout the Scriptures. Richard Rohr describes it as Order, Disorder, and Reorder. Every original Order includes an initially threatening Disorder, which morphs into and creates a new Reordering, and we begin all over again. Every one of us has lived this pattern. It’s the Paschal Mystery, a story of life, death, and resurrection. We grow spiritually by passing beyond some perfect Order, through an often painful and seemingly unnecessary Disorder, to an enlightened Reorder.

Jesus, by his life, death, and resurrection, offers us a clear vision of what true life looks like. To the extent we do not share that vision we are blind. As tragic as blindness is, the greater tragedy is when we cannot even recognize that we are blind. Bartimaeus knows he is going nowhere, and his life remains unchanged. Every day he holds out the cloak of his blindness and begs. Like him, we stumble our way through life believing that this is as good as it gets. We’re content to sit by the roadside and beg, letting life pass us by. We can feel stuck, more like a spectator than a participant. How and what we see determine the world we live in and the life we live. At some point all of us sit cloaked in darkness, unable to see.

The darkness fills and covers us. Maybe it’s about exhaustion or indifference. Sometimes it’s the darkness of grief and loss. Sin and guilt blind us to what our life could be. Other times we live in the darkness of fear, anger, or resentment. Doubt and despair can distort our vision. Failures and disappointments darken our world. Maybe the answers and beliefs that once lit our way no longer illuminate. There’s no clarity. We hide in the shadows neither wanting to see nor to be seen. Perhaps the deepest darkness is when we become lost to ourselves, not knowing who we are.

It doesn’t matter what caused Bartimaeus’ blindness. What matters is that he knew that he was blind. He held his blindness before Christ believing and hoping that there was more to who he was and what his life could be. It was out of that knowing, believing, and hoping that he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” That’s the cry of one who abandons themselves to God. The one who cannot see cries out to be seen. It is that cry that stopped Jesus in his tracks.

“Call him here,” Jesus said. With that calling misery meets compassion. He stands before Jesus who asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” That is the question for every one of us who have ever sat in darkness. It’s the question Jesus asks us over and over, again. “What do you want me to do for you?” This question offers a turning point, a new beginning. It asks us to look deep within our self, to face what is, and name what we want.

The thing about sitting in darkness is that at the time we can never see what’s coming. The most Bartimaeus could do was to be faithful in his darkness, to not run away from it, but to cry out in hope. And that’s true for us. We are no strangers to the feeling of being depleted with nothing in reserve, when life overwhelms, and we wonder how or if we’ll get by. It’s important for us to reflect on what we have done with that experience, or what that experience has done with us. Those times are a necessary part of our spiritual journey. They are the ways in which we mature and come to ourselves. They are our gateway to fullness of life. I am not suggesting that God causes those times, but that God does not waste them, that God wastes nothing of our lives – not our blindness, not our sitting by the roadside, not our begging, and neither should we.

In Mark’s Gospel the Bartimaeus story immediately precedes the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. It concludes with this: “Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way” (Mark 10:52). Theologically, Mark is telling us that if we are to follow Jesus on the Way, we all will need new sight, new vision, to see, understand, and follow. What do you want Jesus to do for you today? What is the thing you need today that will open your eyes to see yourself, others, and all of creation as beautiful and holy? What is the thing you need today that will allow you to throw off the cloak of blindness and take you from sitting and begging by the roadside to following Jesus on the Way? +Amen.