In this Sunday’s Gospel, we encounter Bartimaeus, the blind man who cries out to Jesus, “Master, I want to see!” His plea for physical sight resonates deeply with our spiritual condition. Like Bartimaeus, we, too, are often blind—not in the physical sense, but spiritually. We stumble through life distracted by our busyness, unable to see the loving presence of God in the midst of our everyday moments. But, just as Jesus opens Bartimaeus’ eyes, He desires to open ours as well.
I am reading the book Braving the Thin Places, by Julianne Stanz and she speaks to the hidden places in our hearts where we store away our pain and brokenness, like a “junk drawer” where we shove the things we don’t want to deal with. We all have that drawer—the one we keep shut to avoid facing our wounds, fears, and vulnerabilities. Stanz writes, “We all have a junk drawer in our heart, filled with the broken pieces of ourselves we are too afraid to confront. But Jesus invites us to open that drawer, to bring our brokenness into the light, and allow God to heal us.”
This weekend, we have a special opportunity to allow the Lord to heal our spiritual blindness through our “Seeds of Contemplation” parish retreat. In the stillness of this retreat, we are invited to echo the prayer of Bartimaeus: “Lord, help me see!” In silence, we sit before God, opening ourselves to the possibility of seeing Him more clearly in our daily lives. Psalm 46 reminds us: “Be still, and know that I am God.” In this stillness, we cultivate the awareness that God is present in all things, at all times.
If you haven’t joined us at the retreat this weekend, you are welcome to join us this afternoon, for the Saturday evening 5:00 pm Mass (live streamed here) with Catholic musicians and composer Trevor Thomson and Meredith Augustin. It will be a very special weekend Mass and all are welcome. Please also join us in person for the final evening musical prayer session to close the retreat out at 7:00pm. It will be an incredible opportunity to learn how to pray contemplatively and enter into the silence of God’s deep love for us and allow it to heal us from the inside out.
Our desire is to make a little room in our day—whether it’s just a few minutes of silence—to be with God, so that we may learn to recognize His hand in both the extraordinary and the ordinary. The retreat this weekend is a perfect way to start, but the real work continues afterward, in our daily commitment to contemplation. Through this prayerful silence, we grow in our ability to see God not only in moments of profound spiritual insight but also in the simple, everyday encounters that make up the fabric of our lives.
Let us pray, like Bartimaeus, to have our eyes opened—to see God’s grace, goodness, and love, which surround us at all times. And let us take time this week, during the retreat or in our personal moments of stillness, to sit in silence and invite the Lord to show Himself to us in all things.
Last Saturday, you could feel the love in the gym as our Youth Ministry hosted the Special Olympics Athletes, their families and friends for a Halloween Dance in the gym! It was a wonderful evening of fun and fellowship. Thank you to all the students and parents who volunteered and I would like to especially thank Kalena Moreira, our Youth Minister, and the Youth Ministry team for their planning and coordinating of this event.
God Bless,
Fr. Brendan