30th Sunday: "have mercy on us"

Jeremiah 31, 7-9; Psalm 126; Hebrews 5, 1-6; St. Mark 10, 46-52

Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Christ walks the streets of the ancient city of Jericho in our Gospel, already thousands of years old in his own day. With his disciples and a great crowd following him, as our Lord is departing the city, Bartimaeus the blind beggar calls out in dire need: "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!" His prayer, of abasement before the divine Goodness, teaches us to recognize our own utter neediness before almighty God.

The blind, the handicapped, all those who labor under physical suffering are blessed, for these maladies serve as outward signs of their complete dependence upon God and His divine mercy. One's physical handicaps can be transformed into a spiritual advantage through faith which leads to sincere desire for the grace of forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life.

The gift of prayer is given so that we might respond with honesty to God, with unclouded recognition that every one of us is a Bartimaeus, suffering from blindness, physical or spiritual, and that we need the mercy of God to enlighten us, give us the true vision to see ourselves as we are and to accept the mercy and life of God to fill our emptiness. Our Christian love draws us in prayer and in life to make an effective offering of self, after the Lord's example. (CCC 459)

In the living tradition of prayer, each Church proposes to its faithful, according to its historic, social, and cultural context, a language for prayer: words, melodies, gestures, iconography. The Magisterium of the Church (Cf. DV 10) has the task of discerning the fidelity of these ways of praying to the tradition of apostolic faith; it is for pastors and catechists to explain their meaning, always in relation to Jesus Christ. (CCC 2663)

There is no other way of Christian prayer than Christ. Whether our prayer is communal or personal, vocal or interior, it has access to the Father only if we pray "in the name" of Jesus. The sacred humanity of Jesus is therefore the way by which the Holy Spirit teaches us to pray to God our Father. (CCC 2664)

But the one name that contains everything is the one that the Son of God received in his incarnation: JESUS. The divine name may not be spoken by human lips, but by assuming our humanity The Word of God hands it over to us and we can invoke it: "Jesus," "YHWH saves." (Cf. Ex 3: 14; 33: 19-23; Mt 1: 21) The name "Jesus" contains all: God and man and the whole economy of creation and salvation. To pray "Jesus" is to invoke him and to call him within us. His name is the only one that contains the presence it signifies. Jesus is the Risen One, and whoever invokes the name of Jesus is welcoming the Son of God who loved him and who gave himself up for him. (Rom 10:13; Acts 2:21; 3:15-16; Gal 2:20) (CCC 2666)

This simple invocation of faith developed in the tradition of prayer under many forms in East and West. The most usual formulation, transmitted by the spiritual writers of the Sinai, Syria, and Mt. Athos, is the invocation, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners." It combines the Christological hymn of Philippians 2:6-11 with the cry of the publican and the blind men begging for light. (Cf. Mk 10: 46-52; Lk 18:13) By it the heart is opened to human wretchedness and the Savior's mercy. (CCC 2667)

I look forward to meeting you here again next week as, together, we "meet Christ in the liturgy" -Fr. Cusick

(See also CCC 548, 2616.)

(Publish with permission.) http://www.christusrex.org/www1/mcitl/