Overcoming our blindness

THAT gospel character Bartimaeus, the blind man, gives us
a precious lesson with respect to a certain blindness that we all
have. Like him, we have to acknowledge our blindness and humbly beg
Christ for a cure by repeating Bartimaeus’ words, “Master, I want to
see” (ut videam). (Mk 10,51)

            Though we may enjoy good vision at the moment, we have to
realize that to be able to see things properly and completely, we
simply do not rely on our eyes nor any of our senses.

            Our eyes and senses can only capture a little part of the
whole reality that governs us. They can only perceive what are called
the sensible realities, still light-years away from the intelligible,
not to mention the spiritual and supernatural aspects of reality.

            Still what they get and gather are very useful and in fact
are indispensable, since the data they give are like the raw material
that will be processed by our more powerful faculties of intelligence
and will. In this sense we can already consider ourselves as suffering
from some kind of blindness.

            We need to be more aware that nowadays there is a strong
tendency to base our knowledge of things mainly on the material and
sensible realities alone. That’s why we have these disturbing
phenomena of materialism and commercialism comprising our mainstream
world of knowledge and understanding.

            We have to correct this tendency because that simply is
not the whole of reality. Our senses can only have a limited view of
things. And what is worse, that limited condition is aggravated by the
effects and consequences of our sins that not only limit but also
distort reality.

            Thus, if our thinking, judging and reasoning are simply
based on the sensible and the material, we would miss a lot of things
and would unavoidably get into trouble. We end up making our own
world, our own reality which is actually a fantasy, an illusion, if
not a delusion.

            This is where we have to very strongly acknowledge our
blindness so that we recognize what is lacking and wrong with us, and
start to look for where the remedy and cure can be found.

            We should imitate Bartimaeus in that when he realized it
was Christ passing by, he immediately screamed, “Son of David, have
pity on me!” We have to acknowledge that we are blind and that we are
in great need of help that can only come from God who is our Creator,
Father and Provider for everything that we need.

            Being the Creator, God is the one who has designed
everything in the world. He is the one who knows its ins and outs,
what is real and not real, good and bad, etc. It is from him and with
his light that we can see things clearly and completely.

            We should not simply depend on our senses, nor on our
intelligence and will and the other faculties we have, like our
memory, imagination and other talents, no matter how excellent they
are. At best, they are meant to be mere instruments.

            They should not be made as the ultimate source of truth
and primary means to know the whole of reality. Obviously, to
acknowledge this would require a great amount of humility, since we
tend to make our own selves as the ultimate god, reflecting the very
error of the first sin that took place in Eden with our first parents.

            And nowadays, with the great progress of our sciences and
technologies, we have a formidable temptation to make ourselves our
own god, the maker and not just the stewards of the universe, deciding
on what is true and false, good and bad, and on the destinies of
everyone.

            We can be so intoxicated by our own powers and
achievements that our pride and self-absorption with their consequent
blindness can appear invincible and incurable. We are actually
drifting toward this kind of situation today.

            We have to be most wary of this danger, and so we have to
realize ever more deeply that the more power we have and the more
achievements we make, the more our humility should be.

            We have to make sure that every advance we make in any
field of human knowledge should not dull but rather sharpen our need
for God, our sense of gratitude to him, our awareness that we need to
do everything with him and for him.

            This is what a deepening sense of humility would entail.
And this is what would put us in the right path, avoiding the danger
of blindness.