1. The Introit.
“Seek the Lord…..seek always the face of the Lord.” The psalm states that salvation is seeking the face of God and so we beg God ‘not to hide His face from us.’ That we see His face.
All man are born blind, because of original sin. Though we can see all of earthly creation, we cannot see God and the spiritual realm. And man must accept that he cannot rise up from the natural to the supernatural without help from God. A help that can come only when we beg for it.
2. The commands of God.
God gives us His help in the form of a command that we must obey. When we obey, He gives His help.
Just as we have four levels in our worldly education, kindergarten, elementary, high school and college before we can work and earn money, there are, also, four levels of education man must undergo before he can see the ‘Face of God.’ These four levels are commandments that gradually becomes more difficult which we must obey for us to pass His tests and receive a favorable judgment on the approaching feast of Christ the King.
3. The four levels are levels of knowledge directed towards the intellect. The mind must possess this knowledge to be able to see the Face of God.
The first level is knowledge of the commands of God as found in the Old Testament. These commands can be summarized in the Golden Rule or the 10 commandments of God given to Moses. Ex. ‘Do not covet your neighbor’s wife.’ And ‘Do not commit adultery.’ Obedience to the commands in this level qualifies us to go to the next higher level. Disobedience to these commands disqualifies us from the Church.
4.The second level is knowledge of the commands of Jesus Christ as found in the New Testament. These commands can be summarized in Love of God and Love of neighbor. Though both Old and New Testament commands of God can be read in a book or learned from a man, Scriptures does not interpret these commands. So we have to go to the third level.
5. The third level is knowledge of the Fathers of the Church who interpreted the commands of the New Testament. By doing so they indirectly interpret, also, the commands of the Old Testament since the former is the perfection of the latter. Needless to say, this third level is more difficult to understand than both the Old and New Testament.
6 The fourth level is knowledge that comes from contemplative prayer. No one can teach this fourth level except God, Himself. It cannot be learned from books, from human teachers, from seminaries or even from theology schools abroad. It can be learned, only, within the Liturgy of the Sacrifice of the Mass,
7.The 30th Sunday in Ordinary time shows us the importance of the first level of knowledge which is knowledge of the 10 commandments of the Old Testament. The blind man Bartimaeus is the Symbol of men. Because of original sin all men were born intellectually blind. He does not know how to save his soul. He must go through the four levels; from knowledge of the commands of God in the Old Testament up to ‘how to pray’ which he can learn through his personal unceasing contemplative prayer. Then he can see the face of God and follow Him. The Gospel is telling us the importance of the first level, i.e. knowledge and obedience to the commands of God in the Old Testament without which man remains blind.
8. Bartimaeus took the first step with obedience of Faith, wherein he obtained the first level of knowledge. It happened this way.
The blind man felt Christ was passing by. He knew it was Christ, the Son of Man. So he called on him that he might see. Not merely physically which would make the story too shallow but for him to see the truth intellectually, which is always the deeper meaning of the Gospels.
Christ gave him a command to come to Him. Christ was, in fact, telling them to do something that needed Faith. Bartimaeus was blind he wouldn’t have any idea where Christ was. For him to obey will need great effort.
Though blind, he cast off his cloak, jumped up and came to Christ. That was quite a feat for a blind man. But not for one who has Faith.
The obedience of Bartimaeus to Christ’s command though he did not know why Christ is commanding him to do something he could not do well due to his blindness, was the first level of intellectual knowledge necessary to progress. Bartimaeus’ obedience to a command he did not quite know how to obey because he was blind, made it an act of Faith. Bartinaeus’ ‘obedience to one command is equivalent to obedience to all the commands of Christ, wrote St. James. If Bartimaeus did not move from where he was sitting and, probably complained ‘I can’t go to you because I cannot see you,’ he would never had been cured and follow Christ. Note that the obedience of Bartimaeus was not pure and simple obedience. It was obedience of Faith as Scriptures would aptly describe it.
9. Obedience.
Bartimaeus is the personification of a man who have obeyed either one command perfectly which is equivalent to obeying all the commands of God, according to St. James.. Doing this he begun to see Christian truths intellectually.
On the other hand, he who disobeys the commands of God in the Old Testament, by committing adultery or being gay has not yet asked Christ to cure the blindness of his intellectual eyes. He is still blind and can only be a blind leading the blind.
10. All those studying for the priesthood from the 1800 up to now do not have a complete knowledge of their sins and, therefore, are still blind. This, according to Pope Gregory XVI, Pius IX and Pius X is due to their embracing the heresies of liberalism and modernism that leads them to establish a new Protestant sect. Hardly any priest or bishop know the list of 80 heresies condemned by the “Syllabus of Pius IX” and the 65 errors of the Modernist by Pius X. All of those errors are heresies. All priests are guilty of them especially No. 78, 79 and 80 of the former. Almost all priests are blind to these errors.
So far, only Cardinal Arinze came out publicly in Nigeria showing how Pope Francis is guilty of most of the heresies. Which made him conclude that Pope Francis is disqualified from being Pope. A principle confirmed by St. Robert Bellarmine in his ‘De Romano Pontifice.’ This stand had influenced the African Bishops who are now behind the Polish bishops and led by the ‘now’ popular 13 Cardinals during the on-going Bishop’s Synod 2015, led by Cardinal Pell, who are defending the Catholic concept of the family against the modernistic heretical notion being proposed by Pope Francis.
11. They do not know their sins. They were blind to their sins.
To know one’s sin is the beginning of the journey of a soul to God. How can you repent if you do not know your sins. Bartimaeus had to know his sins that caused his blindness. And he must obey the command contrary to that sin to qualify and receive this first degree of intellectual knowledge.
All candidates to the priesthood were born blind with original sin. They must go through this first step and know their sins to begin their journey towards the curing of their sight so they can follow Christ and led others to Him. But as the 12 Popes from Pius IX to Benedict mentioned this was never taught in the seminary during their Papacy. Though they ordered this first step to be taught to open the eyes of all seminarians it was never taught. So most priests and bishops remained blind. Why? Because of their continuous disobedience to the commands of Christ that caused them to remain blind. The monastic movement was, precisely, the cure for this. But the monastic movement waned during the Papacy of these so-called Marian Popes.
The continuous violations of the 10 commandments specially of the 6th and 9th commandment caused seminarians to more easily fall into the other sins like the heresies mentioned in the ‘Syllabus’ by Pius IX and X. Those sins are no ordinary sins. They are sins with anathemas and excommunications attached to them.
12, Some Synod Fathers do not know their sins, thus, they are blind beggars that need first to be healed by Christ.
The above mentioned 12 Marian Popes had already warned the Church of the spread of heresies which they described one by one because they were already contaminating the hierarchy during their Papacies.
Pope Pius IX even received the information that these new breed of heretical priest aimed at putting one of their kind in the Papal throne to accomplish their goal of changing the true Catholic religion into one that is made according to their private consciences.
13. The height of the heresy of Modernism.
The final aim of the heresy of Modernism is to replace the Church of Christ and the Fathers with a new Protestant denomination made, as usual, by man like the Hermeneutics of discontinuity or the Church of Compassion and mercy. The Jubilee Year of Mercy and the Missionaries of mercy are meant to spread this new sect.
How can they be recognize? They are sinning against the commandments of God, the commands of Jesus Christ, the commands of the Magisterium as enumerated in the ‘Syllabus.’ And they don’t know that they are sinning. In fact, they think they are even doing service to God.
The Synod is filled with good bishops and cardinals. How did they escape the contagion of the heresy of modernism that had affected all priests? Personal study, personal prayer, personal industry that God saw and blessed them for it.
14.The shouts heard around the world today are; ‘Free us from the chains of an unhappy marriage.” Give us freedom to chose our marriage partner.’ ‘Let us immigrate where ever we want.’ ‘Prevent global warming.’ ‘Save the elephant tusk.’ This is the cacophony of sounds in the world.
No one is hearing ‘Lord, that I may see.’