Our blindness and our faith

By Fr. Roy Cimagala *

          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 materials

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.

          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.

          We have to acknowledge our blindness, ask Christ for a cure

with a lot of faith, so that we can actually see and know things as

they really are. We need to humble ourselves so that our pursuit for

knowledge will always be inspired and accompanied by the desire for a

growth of faith, for an insistent faith like that of the blind man in

the gospel, so that that knowledge will lead us to have greater

charity.

          We should be wary of our usual problem which we should

resolve by always deepening our humility. If we notice that the growth

of our knowledge of things does not lead us to a greater love for God

and for others, then it is bogus knowledge no matter how scientific

that knowledge may appear to be.

* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com