30th Sunday Year B - Homily 3

 Homily 3 - 2015

Pope Francis has made some wonderfully memorable one-liners over the couple of years that he has been our Pope. One I like is his description of the Church as a “field hospital” with its company of walking wounded - rather than the home barracks with soldiers marching around neatly in step and the sergeant major keeping a strict rein on everyone. Another of his colourful images is his firm preference that people with responsibility in the community have “the smell of the sheep”. Those sayings of Francis fit well with last week’s comment of Jesus about himself, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for the many”.

Today’s story from Mark’s Gospel presented Bartimaeus as the symbol of the enlightened disciple who, once enabled to see, “followed Jesus along the way”. You might be familiar with a similar story two chapters back where Jesus cured another blind man but needed to do so in two stages, because the first stage turned out to be incomplete. Between that story and today’s one, Mark listed a series of incidents and teachings where Jesus, having completed his message about the Kingdom, proceeded to open the eyes of his disciples to their life together within the community. His main concern was to lead them to see that, like him, disciples of every age are called not to sit around and expect to be served. Rather they are called to serve each other; and to give, if not their lives, at least their time and talent in the service of the community. Then, supported by a vibrant community, they can effectively build the Kingdom by serving the world in which they live.

Over recent years the number of priests in the diocese has been lessening, as has the number of actively involved parishioners. Where might God be in all this? I often wonder whether this might not be God’s way of coaxing us all to a richer experience of Church. With the priest’s workload being constantly stretched, we more clearly recognise that things need not be as they were in the recent past. In fact, many of those things previously done by priests are being better done, even if differently, by you parishioners. This increased involvement so often has led to a deeper, more informed and more satisfying faith experience for you.

I think it is great that over recent months parishioners have had the opportunity to get together and, through the Rebuild program, to look at the parish with renewed gaze, searching how you might better respond to present and future opportunities to deepen and enliven your Christian life and your mission to the world. The current Parish Stewardship Program comes at a providential moment as you each review your store of time, talent and treasure in your service of each other.  It fits well with the overall parish undertaking.

 We might well ask the enlightened and liberated Bartimaeus to take our hand as together we “follow Jesus along the road.”