Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle B

Jer 31:7-9
Heb 5:1-6
Mk 10:46-52

The Gospel passage today about Jesus’ response to Bartimaeus epitomizes a key aspect of Christian teaching on social justice, namely, our preferential option for the poor. A “sizable crowd” was passing by, and the center of attention was Jesus. Not only were people not paying attention to the man by the side of the road, but his cries proved to be a nuisance, and people tried to silence him. Bartimaeus symbolizes the marginalized of our society, the inconvenient and burdensome – in short, the unwanted. Crowds pass them by every day and don’t even want to think about them.

Jesus, however, pays attention neither to the crowd nor to those who tried to eliminate the nuisance. He paid attention to the man at the margins. And he called him and healed him.

As we promote a Culture of Life, there are some who want to silence even further the already silent screams of the unborn, who constitute the most marginalized and oppressed segment of humanity today. Yet as a Church we are called to give urgent attention and priority to these children. We are called to embody the response of Christ, ignoring the rebukes of the “politically correct” segments of our society, and identifying ourselves with the “man at the margins.” Not only is this an imitation of Christ, but it is a fulfillment in our day of the prophecy of Jeremiah that we hear in the first reading. God’s promise regarding his scattered and oppressed people is, “I will gather them.” That’s what the pro-life effort of the Church does – it gathers back together those who are scattered by the legal fiction that their lives are not equal to the rest of people; it restores protection to those who would otherwise be scattered by the physical violence of abortion.