At first glance, this little exchange between Our Lord and Bartimaeus might seem a little silly, or at least not just not very profound.  We could imagine being there and seeing Our Lord approached by this man, and being tempted to ridicule his question, “what do you want me to do for you?”  He’s blind; what do you think he wants?  But there’s a lot more going on here than that.  Bartimaeus does want to see, and this is what he tells Our Lord, quite directly: “I want to see.”  This, more generally, is what we all want.  We want to perceive things as they really are.  Especially when things in our life are confusing and dark.  Sometimes there’s a haze in our life for any number of reasons, some our fault, some not.  And we don’t like that.  We want to perceive things accurately; we want to understand why things are as they are.  We want things in life to make sense.  And that’s very natural.  We want to see.  We want to see and perceive and comprehend the truth. 

The most basic definition of “truth” is “the correspondence of the mind to reality.”  A truth, a true statement, is a thought in your mind or something that you say, that reflects how things really are.  Truth is the correspondence of the mind to reality.  And this is really what we long to have, and long to see.  We long to perceive reality, the way things really are.  Our sight is so important to us because it gives us a lot of information about the realities around us.  Knowledge comes to us through the senses; and if that knowledge accurately reflects reality, it’s truth.  This is why there’s no such thing as “my truth” or “your truth” or “his truth,” because truth isn’t an opinion or a preference or even a value: it’s directly connected to reality.  If it reflects the way things really are, it’s an expression of truth.  

So, back to our friend in the gospel: what happens immediately once his sight is restored: as soon as he can see, what reality does he perceive?  What truth does his mind arrive at?  And what does he choose to do with sight restored after perhaps years, decades, or even a lifetime in blindness.  He follows Christ.  He perceives Truth, who is standing in front of him, and his mind corresponds to the greatest reality of them all.  And Our Lord doesn’t put him on a guilt trip about it: “Now you have to follow me you know, after what I’ve done for you.”  No, Our Lord doesn’t demand some kind of retributive servitude as payment for his act of love.  His love is always free and unconditional, and it’s freeing.  The Lord has already given this man a great dose of freedom by restoring his sight.  And he doubles down on that gift: “Go on your way,” he invites Bartimaeus.  Now you can find your path, with your sight restored.  But Bartimaeus, we’re told, makes a profound choice: among a world of possibilities that are now open to him, he chooses to follow Christ. 

This is an outstanding example of what freedom really is, by the way.  It’s not just doing whatever you feel like at any given moment.  It’s the ability and the capacity to choose and pursue the good.  And this is the gift that Christ gives to the blind man.  He frees him from his blindness and infirmity and his destitution, and Bartimaeus activates his freedom in the best possible way.  He has become free to perceive the Good, literally, by seeing Our Lord with his eyes, and he then follows after the Good, he follows our Lord on the way. 

Our prayer, our longing, is not so different from Bartimaeus’, I think.  Whatever that darkness and haze might be in our lives: Lord, I want to see.  I want to perceive the way things really are.  I want my mind to correspond to reality.  Whenever that prayer is answered, whenever the fog lifts, no matter what the situation is, if by God’s grace, we are able to see…just like for Bartimaeus, it will be Christ standing before us.  And our response, in full peace and freedom, will be to follow him.