Fr Oliver Treanor looks at the miracle of the curing of the blind man Bartimaeus and goes on to draw out the full meaning in the light of the gospel.
Of all the healing miracles Jesus performed, the one I find easiest to imagine p because it is most like nature’s own way of healing – is that of the blind man in Mark’s Gospel, chapter 8. It is quite different from any other miracle because of the way it was done.
From sight to insight
Instead of curing the man’s blindness all at once, Jesus did it in stages. Leading him by the hand out of the village where he lived, Jesus put spittle on his eyes and then asked, ‘Do you see anything?’ I see men,’ replied the man looking up, ‘but they look, like trees, walking’. So Jesus laid his hands on his eyes once more. The blind man stared intently, and this time he could see perfectly. Sight was fully restored.
First blindness to blurred vision; then from a blur to clearsightedness. You can almost envisage it happening. Something in the gradual change rings true. Like going to the optician to get your glasses changed.
But it is an unusual miracle as Gospel miracles go. It is as if we were meant to see something beyond the actual story. So what is Mark trying to show us?
Mainly that Jesus was not just a good optician but the Saviour. Everything he did pointed to a gift of deeper significance. In this case, insight. How many people see Jesus as the Son of God for example? Or perceive what that actually means?
Key question
Interestingly, in the passage immediately after the cure of the blind man Jesus asks his own disciples – Simon Peter and the Eleven – ‘Who do you say that I am?’ In other words, though I may be familiar to you by sight, do you recognize who I really am and what I have come to do? The question is directed to everyone. Which is why Mark places it in the centre of his Gospel. It is a question of central importance, the most important one ever asked, for upon the answer depends our salvation.
Simon Peter knew the correct answer readily enough; ‘You are the Christ’, but he didn’t see what that involved. At least not at first. He had to come to it gradually. Like the man with the blurred vision. Short-sighted, so that everyone looked like trees walking. Even when Jesus tried to explain that this tree was the cross, that the Christ had to suffer and in that way heal the blindness of sin, Peter did not want to look.
‘God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you’, is what he actually said, according to Matthew’s version of the same incident (16:22). Had Peter succeeded in dissuading Jesus from his passion, the world’s sin would still be unredeemed.
To acknowledge the cross in Christ is to share it with him. Maybe that is why Peter tried to talk him out of it. He did not want to get that close to suffering.
But Jesus did not fudge the truth; he made it crystal clear to all his disciples. ‘If anyone would
come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’ Not till later did Peter see the point.
And so on Good Friday he disappeared, was nowhere to be seen. Eventually however, when the darkness of Calvary gave way to the light of Easter, his vision changed. The experience of resurrection opened the eyes of his faith fully, enabled him to accept his own crucifixion three decades later at the Vatican hill in Rome. The gradual healing was complete.
Most interesting of all in Mark’s Gospel is the way he comes back to the blind man theme after Jesus’ question to
Peter. For in the following chapter he describes the cure of the blind beggar, Bartimaeus, but concludes the story in a way that is different from the first.
‘Your faith has made you well,’ Jesus said to the beggar, now sighted; and immediately, Mark adds, ‘he followed Jesus on the I road’ (10:52).
Followed him as his disciple I along the path to his death. Jesus had bestowed on him more than physical vision. He had I given him spiritual insight too. Whoever possesses this, Mark seems to be teaching us, becomes capable of going anywhere with Jesus.
Never despair
When we shirk the suffering that comes from following Jesus, flinch at the pain involved in being faithful to his teaching; when we cringe at the inconvenience of obeying his word, or wish for a different cross than the one he has laid upon us, we should not despair.
The miracle of faith is just not yet complete in us. Gradually, for those who truly desire it, the patient hands of Christ will gently touch our eyes a second time Then, as with Peter or Bartimaeus, or the blind man of Mark chapter 8, we will recognize the glory of the cross as well as its’ darkness because we will see that Jesus carries it with us and is leading us to wholeness and holiness.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (September 1998), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
