"Confidence in Prayer" - 30th Sunday Homily

Halloween is Thursday, All Saints' Day is Friday.

Halloween is the abbreviation for All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Eve.

Halloween is to All Saints' Day, but Christmas Eve is to Christmas.

It's a celebration of the Saints.

It's a Catholic feast, Halloween.

We celebrate victory over death.

The world is

kind taking it over and celebrates, lionizes the kind of scary figures of death in the supernatural.

But we celebrate the saints who have passed through death into life in Christ.

Three common characteristics of all the saints, love for the Eucharist, devotion to the Blessed Mother, and great confidence in God.

And to that third point, I think of saints when they're in temptation, that confidence in God just shows the ways of God far outweighing the ways of sin.

And just confident in the goodness of God and not giving in to temptation.

But they also had confidence in prayer.

Confidence in God, confidence in prayer, confidence as pray-ers, which is so important and so helpful to our faith.

With God's help, we have confidence in our prayer, and as pray-ers, we'll have confidence as believers.

Bartimaeus was a man of great confidence in God.

And it really showed beautifully throughout this scene.

Where here is his chance, the one chance probably, that he has to be cured of his blindness in front of a huge crowd.

I was with the Commanders last night for Mass and thinking, you know, the rookie making his playing his first set of all game or coach his first game in front of huge crowd.

That would be scary, intimidating.

And that's kind of what Bartimaeus had in front of the big crowd and he doesn't back down He's not afraid, he's confident.

And so he cries out, Jesus son of David have pity on me.

It's that strong action verb, cry out like the first reading.

Prophet Jeremiah says, shout, exalt, proclaim.

We Catholics are not really comfortable with all this stuff.

This loud, vocal, confident prayer so that people there, looks like they're Catholics, they're like, dude, quiet down, all right?

Be silent, chill with this public prayer.

He didn't stop.

He calls out all the more.

He's confident in this moment and what he's called to do.

St.

Paul talks about the call of God.

Bartimaeus is confident that God is calling him to cry out to Jesus in front of the crowd.

As embarrassing or whatever it might be.

Be confident in what God is calling you to do, no matter what that means in front of whoever.

Jesus gets confident in Bartimaeus' prayer.

He's confident this is right.

This is from God.

So he stops and says, call him.

That's when things change.

When he gets Jesus' ear.

That's when things change for us.

When we get Jesus' ear.

That's why we go to his mother for her intercession.

She takes it to her son and he never says no to her.

Things happen.

So when we go to the saints, all the saints in Mary, to take it to Jesus to get his ear.

And that's when things can change in our prayer.

And it changes in the crowd.

The very people are telling him, you know, be quiet, pipe down.

Now they're encouraging him, take courage, get up.

Here we go.

It's the moment.

So he springs up, filled with confidence, and Jesus asks him a question that seems rather obvious, like a duh question.

What do you want me to do for you?

I want to see.

But it's really significant that Jesus asks this and includes Bartimaeus in the whole interaction.

It's important for the question we like to ponder, why do we even need to pray at all?

Because God's mind is made up.

It's a great question and yes, his mind is made up, but his mind, his plan might include our prayers.

And he's moving us to ask for it.

So we should ask, we should state, we should vocalize what it is as Barnamus does.

Master, want to see.

And Jesus, having included him now in the miracle of the curing of his blindness, says, your way, your faith has saved you.

Your confidence in God has saved you.