Spirituality of the Readings
Keep on Asking
Near the screened-in porch where I sat making my yearly retreat one summer night, a thicket of ducks quacked its way across the lake and into a tree or two.
Their loud, non-stop, ever-increasing racket was a shock. Each and every duck citizen, it seemed, felt a duty to yell in full voice and all at once! I supposed they were having a rollicking good time, but what did they achieve with their babble?
Had they come for an evening’s rest? But how could anyone rest with this earsplitting quack-talk?
When they were safely ensconced there began a subtle change in the clatter, very gradual, as when applause reaches a peak at a concert and then, almost unnoticeably, crests and trails off. Each bird gave a bit of quiet to the next until everyone was comfortable and calm.
Except one.
This individual went on and on cawing, absurdly, all by itself.
Then at last a duck-mate nudged it and said, “Hey, buddy we’re all surrounding you and we’re all safe. Zip up your beak.” And it did. There ensued the sleepy silence that I had thought they wanted all along.
And I understood this as teamwork.
I have always loved to be included in a team. Nobody perfect, yet everyone having a special place, keeping the rules, moving along together, and someone comforting the one who can’t take a hint. Today I suppose we would call it community. Or family.
God confirms this in the First Reading.
I will gather the blind and the lame, … the mothers and those with child; they shall return as an immense throng. They departed in tears, but I will console them and guide them; I will lead them to brooks of water, on a level road, so that none shall stumble.
My duck friends might seem to be symbols for this reading. Their alarums—and finally their trusting slumber—maybe weren’t so different from what we ourselves do. Our loud-longing is heard by God, who is saying, “hush, child, the whole flock is here. Settle down.”
In Sunday’s Gospel Blind Bartimaeus, like the last duck, couldn’t stop calling out to Jesus. “Son of David have pity on me!” The rest of the flock tried to shush him, but he kept right on. Over and over, “Son of David have pity on me!”
Jesus stopped walking and said, “call him.” The man waded through the crowd to Jesus, who asked him the same question the squawking ducks had heard: “What do you want?” In this case it was obvious. A blind man would want his sight back. Surely Jesus would not have missed this.
“Master, I want to see.”
But just getting his sight back would not have done it, any more than just landing in the trees did the ducks. Bartimaeus already had the incarnate God standing before him, and maybe this was the fullness of what he “wanted to see.”
“Your faith has saved you,” Jesus said. And the man saw. And followed.
If Jesus asks you or me, “what do you want,” how will we answer? Is the faith that saves us hiding deep within us? Are we able to call for help? Such a call can be fulfilled this very day, you know, if you let it.
Try listening.
“What do you want?”
John Foley, SJ
**From Saint Louis University