Today, Christ comes to meet us. We are all Bartimaeus: that blind man whom Jesus passed by and who jumped up shouting until Jesus noticed him. Perhaps we have a slightly more appealing name... but our human (moral) weakness is similar to the blindness suffered by our protagonist. We too fail to see that Christ lives in our brothers and sisters, and so we treat them as we do. Perhaps we fail to see in social injustices, in the structures of sin, a painful call to social commitment. Perhaps we don't glimpse that "it is more blessed to give than to receive," that "no one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13). We see blurred what is clear: that the illusions of the world lead to frustration, and that the paradoxes of the Gospel, despite their difficulty, bear fruit, bring fulfillment, and give life. We are truly visually impaired, not as a euphemism but in reality: our will, weakened by sin, obscures the truth in our intellect, and we choose what is not right for us.

Solution: call out to him, that is, humbly pray, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me” (Mark 10:47). And call out even louder the more they rebuke you, discourage you, or you lose heart: “Many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he kept calling out all the more…” (Mark 10:48). To call out is also to ask: “Master, I want to see” (cf. Mark 10:51). Solution: take, like him, a leap of faith, believe beyond our certainties, trust in the One who loved us, created us, came to redeem us, and remains with us in the Eucharist.

Pope Saint John Paul II showed us this with his life: his long hours of meditation — so many that his secretary said he prayed “too much” — clearly tell us that “he who prays changes history.” Pope Saint John Paul II showed us this through his life: his long hours of meditation—so many that his secretary said he prayed “too much”—make it clear to us that “he who prays changes history.”