*phew* Okay, let's keep 'em coming. I was asked to give a short testimony/talk at St. Thomas Aquinas High School, my alma mater. The Gospel reading for today was from Mark 10:46-52, which depicts Bartimaeus, the blind beggar. And here we go:
There’s the
old saying that goes, “Love is blind.” Ah. But here’s the truth about that
saying: it’s a bunch of garbage. I
know that because I know God.
So: no major
crisis of faith here. But when I say that I’ve had
a “steady” faith, I don’t mean that my faith has been bland. I don’t mean that I
haven’t grown. In fact, it is only because of my faith that I have grown as a person as much as I have. As I went through
high school, I was active in my faith, and of course I learned things along the
way, but for the most part I just accepted things as true without ever really
wondering why. Either that, or I forgot the things I learned as soon as the
test was over. There was no
realization that what I was doing wasn’t entirely honest with myself or with
the faith that I had been brought up in.
This changed
in the summer of 2008 (the year after graduating from STA), while I was in
Australia for WYD. After WYD ended, my friends and I took a three-day sailing
trip off the coast of Australia. There we were on this little boat: three of my
friends and I, another seven or so passengers, and the captain. Now, at WYD, all
the pilgrims get a ton of stuff like backpacks and hats and water bottles and
t-shirts. So everyone on this boat knew we were Catholic. One day, the captain
struck up a conversation with my friends and I, and he kept asking questions
and making assertions about the Catholic faith. And I couldn’t respond to most
of what the captain said. He was very respectful, and was just genuinely
curious about the Church. But I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t answer his
questions, and I couldn’t actually tell him why I believe what I believe, and
explain to him why it made sense.
That night, while
everyone was lying in his or her bed falling asleep, I was lying on the deck of
the boat. Remember, we were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so besides the
stars, it was pitch black. I’ve never felt as alone as I did that night. I
looked up into the sky, and I distinctly remember asking God, “Who are you?” In
that moment, I realized that while being active in my faith and having a
community was good and necessary, there was much more for me to
discover; I realized that I needed to know God in a more personal way, in a
much more intimate way – the same way
that best friends know each other. I wanted to have an actual personal
relationship with Him that went beyond the mechanical motions of merely attending
Sunday Mass and saying prayers before meals. I wanted to really know him. As Mumford and Sons sings, “you were meant to meet
your Maker.” Since then, I’ve learned that in coming to know Him, I’ve come to
love Him. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the captain on that boat. Through him,
God gave me a swift kick in the pants.
Which brings
me back to that whole ‘love is blind’ business. Love isn’t blind. Love has
perfect vision. Love ignores nothing, and sees everything. If you want to love
something – if you want to love someone
– you need to get to know them. You need to want
to see them, and you need to want to
let them see you. Bartimaeus, the
blind beggar in today’s Gospel, figured it out – he cried out to Christ persistently
and asked him to heal his vision. But the gospel then says that after
Bartimaeus began to see, he followed Christ. Regaining his physical sight was not the end, but the beginning of a
continual opening of his spiritual blindness. Likewise, for me, reaching out to
God on that boat in Australia, asking Him who He really was, was the beginning of me striving to know him intimately,
and therefore to know myself and my life differently, and responding to all of
it appropriately.
I have always
been unsatisfied with fluffy and sappy answers about our faith. This has never
been enough for me. I’m not saying that the fluff necessarily has no truth to
it; I’m just saying that the fluff never has
the full depth of the truth. I don’t
recall any Scripture that describes Jesus talking about puppy dogs and ice
cream. Yes, I know that Jesus
loves me and that he died on a cross to save me. But these have become buzz
phrases. On their own, they don’t satisfy me. They probably don’t satisfy you
either. What do those phrases actually mean?
It’s up to all of us to find out.
If you
find those fluffy answers unsatisfactory, good! Don’t settle for less; you
deserve more. I’ve realized that those answers don’t satisfy because they don’t
speak to me as a person – the truest answers will always speak to you, as a person, all at once. And once you start
to see those answers, you will realize that everything is embedded within it so
much more meaning. Goodness. Beauty.
Wonder and Awe. If you constantly cry out to the Son of David, he will answer
you, and you will be amazed at how much the true meaning of things touches you
to your core. In today's first reading, the writer of Sirach asks, "Can one ever see enough of [God's] splendor" (Sir. 42:25)? If you cry out to Christ, you will be able to respond to the writer of Sirach with a resounding "No!"
So search for
Jesus like the blind man in today’s gospel reading. Search for Him in the
concrete reality that is your life, and see how He searches for you, whether it
be through your family, your friends, your teachers, or captains of sailing
ships off the coast of Australia.
In your search for Jesus, you will be challenged, but you will surely
come to see, just as the blind man did in the gospel.
Domine, ut videam
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