Seeing is believing: in our quest for the wholeness that only Christ can give, a blind beggar leads the way.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF JESUS SHOWED up at your door today and made you whole? It's not a question most of us are prepared to answer because, despite all of our churchgoing and creed-saying, most of us don't expect to encounter Jesus anytime soon. This could be due to a lack of faith, or more simply to a lack of imagination.

But chances are the people who did meet Jesus and were healed along the way were no more prepared for the event than we might be. For us mortals, accustomed to pain and loss and ailment and heartbreak as part of the scheme of things, the idea of being made whole later today can seem highly improbable, to say the least. Yet when we profess our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are saying that miracles do break into time, divine power does walk with us, and coming face to face with God is all part of the plan.

The thought is appealing, because we all have something in our lives that needs healing. That sore shoulder that's been nagging for weeks, or that ache that has persisted in the family for years. Things are not the way they should be: not in our bodies, our relationships, of our world at large. We need someone--Someone--to mend the torn hole in our ozone, to bind the nations together in peace, to bring justice to the poor and hope to those who live in fear.

With no trouble at all most of us could write up an extensive to-do list for God, should the divine choose to show up on our humble doorstep with healing power in hand. Our friends' marriages are crumbling. Members of our family are sick. People we know can't find work. Someone we love suffers from depression, grief, rage, or loss of faith. God, if you're not doing anything this afternoon; could you stop by and fix the world?

With scripture as our witness, God can, does, and has chosen to do just that. In the stories of the New Testament, we see Jesus healing people with just a touch, a word, or an act of will. Lepers are restored, their skin like a newborn's. Those with seizures are quieted, the paralyzed regain mobility, the blind see, the grieving parent has his child brought back to life. The bottom line of the gospels is, Jesus is the hope of the hopeless. If you think all is lost, guess again. Jesus has come to find what is lost!

BUT WHAT HAPPENS TO ALL OF THESE FOLKS AFTER THEY are made whole? The question lingers, because scripture rarely tells us anything beyond the moment of healing. In our modern day, the media would follow these walking miracles around, stick microphones in their faces and ask: "So how does it feel to be brought back from the dead?" "What's it like to walk on legs that never walked before?" "Where are you going, now that you can see the road ahead of you?" "What will you do with the new life you've been given?"

But these healed biblical figures never make the talkshow circuit nor do they write their autobiographies: Demoniac No More! or Lame Man Dancing. All we get are glimpses of the initial reactions of the newly healed. Simon's feverish mother gets up from her bed and waits on her guests. A paralytic picks up his mat and walks away without a word. One leper in 10 remembers to return long enough to give thanks for the miracle. When Jesus casts out demons from some possessed men, the entire region turns out fearfully to beg Jesus to go away.

Rarely is there an exchange between Jesus and the healed person after the event, and often we are told nothing about the response of the recipient of such good news. Generally, the only report we get is the amazement of the crowd around the action. The restored ones themselves have no sequel to offer.

Why can't we follow them home, back to the arras of their astonished families, back to the long-abandoned workshops, back to the temple to give praise to God? It would be instructive to learn that the once-deaf man became a musician, or that the former leper stopped drowning her pain in drink after her isolation ended and she could once more hold her children.

We'd like to know that the two men formerly known as blind met often in the late afternoon and silently watched the beauty of the sunset together, weeping. Of that the boy once possessed by an evil spirit grew up to lead prayer at the local synagogue. Jairus' daughter, dead at age 12, sat up, ate something, and resumed her life long enough to see her greatgrandchildren. But as it stands, none of these stories are made available to us.

MAYBE, HOWEVER, NOT KNOWING IS BETTER THAN KNOWING. Because there are no guarantees when it comes to the behavior of humans, and the fact that these folks had much to be grateful for in no way assures us that they lived out their lives in gratitude. Don't we know people who have been given much and don't seem to be aware of it?

It could be that the man healed of deafness went back to his old haunts with his cronies, shut out the tedious sounds of his wife and children and eventually grew as deaf as before. The leper may have been healed only skin-deep, remaining isolated by her dependence on wine even though she returned to the bosom of her family.

Maybe the men once blind were also steeped in moral ignorance, and used their regained sight to be on the lookout for opportunities to cheat their neighbors. Maybe the boy who once fell prey to an evil spirit was eventually overcome by seven more, and his last state was worse than the first. Jairus' daughter, remembering nothing of being dead, may never have noticed the wonder of being alive during all those long years ahead of her.

Being made whole, we can see, is not all there is to the story. How we respond to the gift we receive is just as important, if not more so.

Which is why the story of blind Bartimaeus stands out among the New Testament healing narratives. Like many before him, Bartimaeus lived a life troubled by unmet need. He sat by the road outside the city of Jericho as a familiar sight to travelers: the Jericho beggar. Every day, the most he could hope for was charity from strangers. What he could also expect was to be abused, sometimes verbally and occasionally physically, by those who found his presence distasteful or his vulnerability alluring.

And then one day he had more to hope for. On that day, he overheard in the excited chatter of passersby that Jesus of Nazareth was coming down this road.

Being a person with nothing to lose, Bartimaeus raised his voice and shouted repeatedly, "Jesus, son of David, have pity on me!" People told him to shut up, and maybe even swatted him on the head, but he kept yelling, anxious not to lose this one chance at wholeness.

When Jesus heard the unfamiliar address. "son of David," he stopped in the road. What a rare act of faith this unseen voice was making! Someone recognized the saving significance of the house of David in him, that he was the bearer of God's covenant and the promised messiah. "Call him," Jesus ordered. The crowds complied in haste.

When summoned, Bartimaeus makes a second act of faith. He casts aside his cloak, which a beggar used for collecting alms from his benefactors. Bartimaeus, called by Jesus, didn't expect to be needing alms anymore. He was stepping forward into a whole new life, and he knew it in every fiber of his being.

"What do you want me to do for you?" Jesus asked plainly.

"Master, I want to see!" Bartimaeus replied just as simply.

"Go your way; your faith has saved you," Jesus told him.

But Bartimaeus didn't go his way. Instead, he went the way Jesus was going. As scripture tells us, the blind man instantly received his sight and chose to follow Jesus "on the way." The phrase used here implies that he followed all the way, to the cross itself.

In Mark's gospel, the restoration of Bartimaeus is the last healing Jesus performs. Next Jesus turns to Jerusalem to face his final week of triumph and treachery. Bartimaeus is a late follower, entering the story long after the glory days of popular preaching and nonstop miracles, inheriting a short and difficult road of discipleship that leads in less than a week to Calvary.

Is this what he expected to see with his newly opened eyes? Could he have guessed that the man who gave him sight would soon be denounced, arrested, beaten, condemned, and executed? How could he turn his gaze to the cross and watch the one he had so recently chosen to follow suffer and die? Did Bartimaeus fiercely wish on that Friday to close his eyes once more and to return to the darkness?

SCRIPTURE TELLS US THAT BARTIMAEUS ASKED FOR HIS SIGHT, and deliberately chose to follow. He alone, of all who received the gift of healing from Jesus, used his newfound vision to become a disciple and eyewitness. This elevates him above the role that most healed characters play as signs of the coming kingdom, all the way to role model for those who seek the wholeness that only Christ can give. Bartimaeus made a unique choice and claims a singular place in the gospels as a result.

In the end, as Jesus pointed out so many times in his teaching, it is not the sight of the eyes that saves, nor the blindness of the eyes that makes us lost. Those who recognize Jesus, like Bartimaeus the Jericho beggar, are granted a vision far more perceptive than that of the Pharisees, whose eyes are clear but whose hearts are darkened.

Bartimaeus recognized Jesus as messiah of God and a teacher worth following before he ever set two sound eyes on him. Judas followed Jesus closely for three years and never saw his Lord. The religious leaders studied scripture all their lives and didn't know the Word of God when it walked into town. The eyes of faith, we might conclude, offer the only sight that counts.

And it is with this sight that we discover an answer to the original question: What would you do if Jesus came to the door today and made you whole? Laugh and weep, perhaps; dance and sing; fall down in worship or cover his hands with grateful kisses. But after you offer your response of joy and thanksgiving, don't forget to fall in behind Jesus as he walks further down the road. Wherever he's going is a better place than any of us are standing right now.

ALICE CAMILLE, author of Invitation to Catholicism and The Rosary: Mysteries of Joy, Light, Sorrow, and Glory, both available from ACTA Publications.