30th Sunday of Ordinary Time – 27 October 2024
In the history of Australian art a new development took place around the end of the 19th century. It was called the Heidelberg School, and listed such artists as Streeton, McCubbin, Roberts, Conder and Withers. These artists’ work was very different from that which had come before it: the work of people like Glover, Martens and Chavalier. The scenes were different, the colours even more so. To set an example of each side by side would dramatically highlight the differences.
Of course the Heidelberg school coincided with the rise in Australian nationalism in the 1880s and 90s. People were beginning to see the country in which they were living differently. No longer were they trying to impose their European, and specifically English, experience on the landscape. They were beginning to allow the landscape around them to speak for itself. Gum trees began to look like gum trees instead of as elm trees in a summer haze.
In the nationalism of the time people were beginning to see Australia as Australia was. IN many ways we are still struggling in this endeavour. However, the history of Australian art reminds us quite vividly that it is not a a struggle that can be taken for granted.
It is no simple thing to see reality as it is.
We impose on reality so much of what is not there. What we see is filtered through our own prejudices and needs. At its worst extent, we see how painfully this is experienced in those who have suffered anorexia. No matter how thin those who suffer with anorexia are they look in a mirror only to still see themselves fat. We might not distort reality to the same extent. Yet, still, we can be sure that the way we see ourselves, the world, and indeed the way we see God, is coloured by so much of what is not there in reality.
It is no simple thing to see reality as it is. And yet, seeing reality – as it is – is the most important part of becoming whole and holy. It is the foundation stone. That is why as Christians we commit our whole life to the task. Seeing reality – as it is – is the means into truthfulness, and it is the truth which sets us free. Often, however, we are afraid of the truth – the truth of ourselves and of others, the truth of God. It is easier not to see reality.
To see reality takes courage. It takes care. And it demands a patience in a certain type of waiting. The story of Bartimaeus in today’s gospel is a paradigm of our journey into vision, into reality. It is not a story of once-off incident but a description of an entire way of living that we are called to as disciples of Jesus.
Bartimaeus is a blind beggar. That is he is empty. He has nothing to cling onto but his hopes. Reflecting on his condition, we begin to recognise that ‘being empty’ and being the gift of vision have an integral link. That is, we need to let go. We need to be still. We shall never truly see the people we live with, for example, until we let go of how we need them to be, and until we stand before them empty of our own intentions and still before the fact that they are truly ‘other; than us.
This emptiness, however, is not inert. Just as for Bartimeaus it is full of care. For it is love which urges us to see. Where love is, there is the eye, as the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas once said. True love does not make us blind. True love opens our eyes. True love – beyond romantic love – accepts the reality of the other person totally as they are, and not just as my intentions or needs would have them. Because of the honesty involved in this love takes so much courage.
Love also waits. We cannot see things for they really are in glances which snatch and grab. Glances which are simply filtered through curiously or criticism or rose-tinted glasses do not give us the vision for which we are looking. Only when we are prepared to wait, yet ready to seize the opportunity when it comes – like Bartimaeus – do we begin to see life as it is.
The story of Bartimaeus teaches us that the gift of sight – the gift to see reality as it is comes to us only as we wait, to the extent that we care, in our readiness to live in a certain state of emptiness, letting go of all that we might want to impose on what is out three.
As our lives are spent living in this way, we might be surprised by what actually begin to see. The old might become new, the things which consume us might lose their fascination, the discarded might become important.
The mystic, Chardin wrote, “Seeing. We might say that the whole of life is in that verb . . . To see more is really to become more. Deeper vision is really deeper being. (Phenomenon of Man, 33).
Lord that we may truly see.
