"When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout and to say, ‘Son of David, Jesus, have pity on me.’" Mark 10:47
Blind Bartimaeus in today's gospel gives us one of the tenderest prayers uttered in Jesus' hearing. Not only is it tender, it is also filled with faith, as Jesus observes when he cures Bartimaeus, saying, "Your faith has saved you."
Could Bartimaeus be the patron saint of those who sit in what feels like total darkness in our sorry world? Our own blindness, or at least the limitations of our vision, seems to make beggars of us all. As the French writer Fabrice Hadjadj says, we are so poor that we must also beg our voices from God to offer him our prayers.
But it strikes me that this is not a sad recognition but a liberating one. I have been thinking a lot lately on that line from the sequence of Pentecost, "Come, thou Father of the poor." To realise we are poor and dependent, like blind Bartimaeus, is not to become poor but to step out of our self sufficiency. At the end of the gospel, Bartimaeus is told to 'Go', but in fact he interprets that command by following Jesus along the road. Jesus granted him his freedom and he spent it instantly on following Jesus.
Yet what does Bartimaeus's shouting mean? No doubt he hollered loud to be heard over the crowd. But, this phrase has an excess about it, rather like in the parable Jesus tells of the man who eventually gives in to his neighbour's repeated request for help in the night (Luke 11:5-8).
Some people pray loud (and fast), like Irish grannies or Bartimaeus. Some pray with minimal fuss and movement, like the Roman centurion. I wonder if what they have in common is the shared universal need to pray with both faith and poverty - with belief in Jesus and a sense of one's own indigence. Then, when Jesus restores to us our freedom, we can spend it extravagantly on him in gratitude, like the newly sighted Bartimaeus.
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