The Lord be with you for reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging.
hearing a crowd going by. He inquired what was happening. They told him, Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. So he shouted, Jesus, son of David, have pity on me. The people walking in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he kept calling out all the more. Son of David, have pity on me.
Then Jesus stopped. He ordered that he be brought to him. And when he came near, Jesus asked him, what do you want me to do for you? He replied, Lord, please let me see. Jesus told him, have faith, have sight,
Your faith has saved you. He immediately received a sight and followed Jesus, giving glory to God. When they saw this, all the people gave praise to God. The gospel of the Lord.
On Saturday Daily Mass, and Daily Mass, of course, will remember we had the parable of the importune woman who constantly sought justice against an adversary before a corrupt judge. And Jesus contrasted that if even a corrupt paid off judge would eventually hear her, please, how much more God who loves us will hear the pleas of his children. So it was a parable about persistent prayer.
And then right after that, for reasons I've never quite figured out that those who redid the electionary didn't give us, we have the parable of the public and in the Pharisee and the temple, which we hear every Lent, but we should be hearing today in which two people went up to pray, one seated in the front row, basically thanking God that he wasn't made like all the other losers.
And then a poor publican in the back, beating his breast, humbly saying, Lord have mercy on me as sinner. Those are two parables illustrating qualities that each of us is supposed to bring to our prayer. And then today, by divine providence, we get not a parable, but a real life story of somebody who illustrates those very lessons.
Someone who continues to cry out for mercy as soon as he heard Jesus approaching somebody who asked the first time and then when everybody tried to shut him up Just cried out all the more and st. Luke with his medical precision uses the term for an animal cry He's just not gonna be stopped and Jesus stops and says bring him to me and then he asks We've got persistent prayer and
And we've got humble prayer. He knows he needs the Lord's help. And he didn't shout out from the side of Jericho, Jesus restored my sight. He could have. He cried out for mercy. He knew he needed that most. And then when the Lord out of mercy brought him clothes, it asked, is there anything I can do for you? He went for it.
In addition to the mercy that he was already being shown, he asked to see. It's important for us at all times in our life to learn how to pray better. And in these lessons and in this real life story, we see how never to give up in our prayer. How to cry out for mercy.
how to have confidence that God will give us justice against those who are corrupt and that ultimately he wants us to see. We see in some sense that Bartimaeus, as he is named in St. Mark's and Matthew's versions of this scene, that Bartimaeus was already in some way seeing. He had faith in Jesus, he was walking by faith even though his physical eyes weren't working.
We likewise realize he had lost his sight because the word he uses on a blepoh I want to see again. He remembered what it was like to see. He was asking for it anew. But the Lord was granting that miracle not because it was merely a petition made with persevering faith. But because he wanted Bartimaeus to see with his physical eyes.
Because at the very end of the gospel, we see why. Having received his sight, he followed Jesus, giving glory to God. He would follow Jesus all the way to the end, all the way to calorie. That is the purpose of our eyes. That's the purpose of our sight. To be able to see God. That was the first face part of may have saw as soon as Jesus restored his sight. To see God. And then see in God to follow God.
Do we ask for that grace to be able to see the Lord and to be able to follow him up close to know exactly where he's leading us? Today's first reading. We see another miracle of sight. The book, the last book of the Bible is called the Book of Revelation.
in which you pull off the veil. That's what Revolazzio means. You remove the veil so that we can start to see things as they really are. This has been the incessant cry of the church from the early states. Teach us about heaven. Teach us about what definitively matters. And through this book, which we'll hear over these last two weeks of the church's liturgical year, we're going to be able to see things, bought a symbolism, but see things from God's perspective.
And so we begin the whole book with what Jesus sees in the seven churches of Asia Minor. But what's really going on, because sometimes we can be blinded by our own pride, or sometimes by our own sorrow. Today we're going to get what Jesus sees about the church in Ephesus. That's the first and the best of the churches.
Tomorrow we'll get what Jesus says about the two worst churches, Sardis and Laodicea, the four churches in between, Pergamum, Shmirna, Philadelphia, and Thyatira. I knew you all knew that. That's your homework because we'll see in each of these churches
certain things that are very relevant for us today. The Lord begins with the church in Ephesus asking St. John to write what he himself sees so that they might be able to see their reality with his vision. He says, I know your works, your labor, and your endurance. He knows how much they're doing for him, how hard they're working,
What are they? You can't tolerate the wicked. Now, we're called to love our enemies. We're called to pray for our persecutors. We're called to hate wickedness. And out of love for those who are wicked, to try to free them from that wickedness, never to tolerate the wicked and their wickedness, but to try to bring them to conversion. First compliment Jesus gave them.
after praising them for their hard works, their labor, their endurance was that they can't tolerate the wicked. We tolerated all the time very easily, washing our hands of it, pretending as if we can't do anything about it. You've tested those who call themselves apostles but are not and have discovered that they are imposters.
There are lots of people who come pretending to proclaim the Word of God, but they're not proclaiming the Word of God. They're proclaiming as false prophets in other gospel. We've got a lot of that today. On the one hand, it becomes way too political as if particular political figures are messiahs.
You've got others who are not echoing the gospel when it comes to the type of love we're supposed to have for immigrants and strangers and those on death row. Jesus talks about them all in Matthew 25 and says that we will be judged by how we treat the hungry, the sick, the naked, the prisoners, the migrants, and yet will have plenty who will preach differently than that. Well, if some,
even try to pretend is if Jesus can tolerate abortion or proclamation of the sexual revolution as if it's what he teaches about human love in the divine plan. We tolerate a lot of this stuff very easily and pronounce our impotence before it all. Jesus wouldn't be praising the church in the United States
for our counter-cultural witness because we're not really living it as a whole. We've got imposters out there and the only way we're ever going to know who's true or who's an imposter is if we learn our faith well enough so that we're able to listen to Lord and grasp it right off the bench.
Moreover, you have endurance and have suffered for my name and haven't grown weary compliments, their toughness, their perseverance and the faith. But he holds one thing against them. These are among the most cutting words ever said, especially for someone who loves.
There can be Jesus' Jeremiah's against the scribes and the Pharisees. We're going to see tomorrow how he turns up the volume on the churches in Sardis and Laodicea. But for somebody who really loves the Lord, this is the most cutting cut of them all. I hold this against you. You have lost the love you had at first. You used to really love me with passion. You don't.
Realize how far you've fallen, repent, and do the works of love you did at first. Otherwise, I will come and remove your lamb stand from its place, that lamb stand, giving light to everybody else. The great example meant to be radiant. He'll have to remove it because it will no longer be true. What's he saying? Our love for God and our love for others are doing the right thing not just because we have to.
But passionately from the heart, that's most important to him. So before him, as he wants to give us an x-ray on the basis of sacred scripture today, would he say that we have still the love we have for him the day we made our first Holy Communion for those who have been born Catholic?
Would he say that we still have the love for him we had after we were leaving our best retreat of all time? Would we have the love we had from when we began to wake up to what vocation he was calling us to? Or maybe had an incredible experience like in the tomb of Jesus? Or an all-night adoration? Or leaving a confessional bathed in his pure living water?
Do we have that love at first? Or would he be able to say that that love we had at first has even grown as we've grown? Were we satisfied with still loving him a little or enough? Jesus wants to give us the grace to love him ever more.
His love for you and for me is always on fire, never wanes. He wants to help us to grow each of us individually and together into a bonfire of love.
Would that we never lose that love we had at first? Would that it grow? And if we ask Lord for that grace, just like Bartimaeus asked for the gift of sight, he will give it because he promised he would, that he would not give us a stone when we asked for bread. He wouldn't give us a poisonous eel if we asked for a fish. So if we ask him for the love we had at first, and we ask him for an even greater love, if we ask him for a love like the great saints have had, he will give it.
But we have to want it. We have to ask with perseverance. Today, we've got the example of one who teaches us how to love like this so that we will all know it's possible. St. Rose, Philippine douchein was born in France in 1869 to a very well-off family. Her dad was a big-time banker.
Her mom came from a family that would eventually produce a French president. When she was growing on up, she really wanted to become a visitation nun, a cloistered visitation sister, a daughter essentially of St. Francis de Seos and Saint Jean de Chantal. The visitation nuns were her teachers. But her dad just wanted her to marry. He wanted to fix her up. He wanted one of those nice, almost quasi-political matrimonies.
So she had to run away, and she loved the Lord Jesus enough to run away. She became a visitation nun. And then, sorry, I gave you the wrong date. It was 1769. I know you all caught that. French Revolution hits. They attack the convents.
She tries to restore it after all the sisters have been sent home, but after a few years it just didn't work. But St. Madeleine Sophie Barat had formed missionaries of the Sacred Heart. And so she and the others still visitation unzassed to leave cloistered sisterly life and become active sisters. And St. Madeleine accepted them all and helped them to continue to live their love for the Lord so that it might grow.
And this new fledgling religious order was dramatically helped by their love. But eventually, in 1819, there was a call from the United States for French teaching sisters in Missouri. And the letter came from Father Pierre Desmatte and the bishop there in what's now St. Louis.
And so when the religious superiors saw this letter, they asked for volunteers. And St. Rose, Philippine, Duchenne, and five other sisters stepped forward. They embarked on a 20-week journey across the Atlantic, down toward New Orleans, and up the Mississippi. It was a very rough journey. She was so sick twice that she almost died. But eventually she arrived. And when she arrived,
It was even tougher. They were given a one-room log cabin for their convent and for all their classrooms as they tried to teach. And people didn't take to the French teaching methods very quickly. They suffered a tremendous amount. She said, heroism and hard things are our daily fear. She said, they've accused us literally of everything
except up until now, poisoning the children. But she labored, and she suffered. And eventually she started to get through. So many of those young girls who had come to their schools now wanted to join St. Rose, Philippine, Duchain, and the other sisters, being able to spread their goodness. And so she was quickly able to open up five convents all along the Mississippi, all the way down into New Orleans.
But eventually when she got into her 70s, she was too infirm to continue to do that work of leading all the sisters as well as teaching. And Father Dismatt had written from Kansas saying he really wanted some of the sisters to just come and be a presence to help his mission succeed through prayers. And so she wanted to go, but everybody thought she was too old and too sick.
And Father this met wrote, no, we absolutely need her because her prayers, her persevering prayers will ensure that we won't fail. So off she went with others. And that's pretty much by this point, all she could do is pray, pray like Bartimaeus, pray like that woman before the unjust judge, pray like that sinner at the back of the temple. And pray she did.
She would go into a little hut where there was the chapel with the Blessed Sacrament, and she would just simply pray all day and all night. The young squaws in the indigenous reservation were fascinated by her stamina, that see her kneeling at night, that see her kneeling in the morning, and it kind of looked like she never slept.
So one day with their particular capacity for stealth, spiritual warfare, they come up behind her and they put on her sweater a whole bunch of little pieces of paper in a pattern just to see if she would lay down that night at all and mess up the pattern. And when they came back the fall and morning, all the pieces of paper were exactly where they were. And so they came up with a name for her.
In the pot of what told me dialect, they called her Quahakkadnumad. I don't have to translate. Quahakkadnumad, the woman who always prays. And that's how she finished. Because she saw the Lord before her.
Because she knew that whatever she asked the Lord, the Lord would grant, including for the success of the missions and so many people to come to have faith in Christ. Because she had works and labor and endurance. And because she never lost the love she had, even as a little girl running away from home to become a religious sister.
Today we count on her prayers for us just like she did for the Potawatomi in our country, just like she did for the children in Missouri. If you go to the country's most beautiful church, which is the Cathedral of St. Louis in St. Louis, right to the side of the cathedral, there's now a little garden
And in the garden, a bronze statue of this diminutive Rose Philippine Deshais. She's seated there, and there are a couple of benches kind of coming around a little bit in a circle. And there's a sign there that just basically says, talk to her. Don't be afraid. You're not going to hear her back. Just like those squads couldn't hear her speaking. They're dialect because in her 70s, she couldn't learn it no matter how much she tried.
But nevertheless, she's speaking back through her prayer. She's speaking back through the love she never loses. So today as we come here to celebrate this Mass, the St. Jesus was passing by Jericho. He's passing by 114th Street. We're going to be able to encounter the one who worked this incredible miracle for Bartimaeus
and he wants to give us something even greater, not just the capacity to see him here, but to consume him within so that he can work an extraordinary miracle within. We ask him as we receive love incarnate, to bring us back to the love we had, the first time we ever received him, and the love we wish to receive him with, the last chance we'll ever have, which might be today.
And may all of us here, first the women and then all the guys, be able to live in such a way that others will be able to call us the one who always prays. How blessed will our fate be if they can. And if the Lord who still speaks to the churches says, this is our identity.
