Revision of PRAYER is about Who We See and How We See from Fri, 11/13/2015 - 9:16am

Sr. Carmen Sammut, the USIG President, proposed recently (after the Synod on the Family) that religious women ask themselves this question:

"How are we engaging with people the official church is not seeing?"

At the Synod on the Family Closing Homily, Pope Francis commented on the day's Gospel which was about Bartimaeus:

There are some temptations for those who follow Jesus.  The Gospel shows at least two of them.  None of the disciples stopped, as Jesus did.  They continued to walk, going on as if nothing were happening.  If Bartimaeus was blind, they were deaf: his problem was not their problem.  This can be a danger for us: in the face of constant problems, it is better to move on, instead of letting ourselves be bothered.  In this way, just like the disciples, we are with Jesus but we do not think like him.  We are in his group, but our hearts are not open.  We lose wonder, gratitude and enthusiasm, and risk becoming habitually unmoved by grace.  We are able to speak about him and work for him, but we live far from his heart, which is reaching out to those who are wounded.  This is the temptation: a “spirituality of illusion”: we can walk through the deserts of humanity without seeing what is really there; instead, we see what we want to see.  We are capable of developing views of the world, but we do not accept what the Lord places before our eyes.  A faith that does not know how to root itself in the life of people remains arid and, rather than oases, creates other deserts.

There is a second temptation, that of falling into a “scheduled faith”.  We are able to walk with the People of God, but we already have our schedule for the journey, where everything is listed: we know where to go and how long it will take; everyone must respect our rhythm and every problem is a bother.  We run the risk of becoming the “many” of the Gospel who lose patience and rebuke Bartimaeus.  Just a short time before, they scolded the children (cf. 10:13), and now the blind beggar: whoever bothers us or is not of our stature is excluded.  Jesus, on the other hand, wants to include, above all those kept on the fringes who are crying out to him.  They, like Bartimaeus, have faith, because awareness of the need for salvation is the best way of encountering Jesus.

Do we let what we see change the way we live, where our interests lie, and what we spend time on?