Monday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 497

Jesus asked him,

"What do you want me to do for you?"

He replied, "Lord, please let me see."

This story of the blind beggar, told in all three gospels, reinforces the Lord's urging us to pray persistently; and it reminds us of the forces arrayed against prayer. No sooner does the beggar -- in Matthew's story, two beggars -- cry out for mercy than those who are traveling with the Lord tell him to pipe down. The obvious inference: that discouraging word comes from the Church!

Something there is that doesn't want to ask for help, that feels ashamed of the urge and would squelch it whenever possible.

I suppose we could search for its historical, psychological origins. We could blame our parents for ignoring us and telling us to quit bothering them with our constant needs. We could remember the rebukes of teachers and classmates who shamed us for asking questions. That personal research can be helpful as we come to terms with the past.

In any case, we have to ask. Before the infant can think a thought it has feelings and needs, and both are often despised. A Cartesian society prizes opinions -- "I think therefore I am!" -- but wants to hear nothing of feelings and needs.

Jesus wants to hear our needs. He wants us.

"What do you want me to do for you?" he asks.

Wouldn't it be lovely to wake up to that question each morning? No sooner do we turn our minds to prayer than we hear him ask, "What do you want me to do for you?"

Today's first reading reminds us of the deplorable condition in which many of us live, "Terrible affliction was upon Israel." If the grand scheme of the Enlightenment was a religion-free world that ran on the Cartesian principles of rationality, it fell apart in Sarajevo in 1914​. As horrible as the situation in Syria is today, that religious strife cannot compare to the European debacles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which were inspired by no religion. The grand experiment of ignoring God fails repeatedly and usually catastrophically. We need help, we are born to be saved.

Religion teaches us to feel and express our feelings. We may sing and dance and celebrate our hopes and dreams and grief. Religion also teaches us to want and to ask for what we want. Maslow's pyramid shows there is no end of human need. We're no sooner content than we want more! Jesus assures us our Father hears us and cares deeply.

Saint Luke tells us that Jesus brushed aside the resistance of his own disciples to hear the blind man's plea. And, hearing him, the Lord immediately answered, "Have sight; your faith has saved you."

On this Monday morning, launching into a new week, we hear the Lord ask, "What do you want me to do for you?"

It might take a moment of reflection -- unexpected as the question is -- but we need a lot of help. And we can ask.