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FAITH NOT KNOWLEDGE GIVES SIGHT Today’s Gospel reading for Holy Mass is the story of the healing of blind Bartimaeus in Mark 10:46-52. Parallel passages exist in Matthew 20:29-34 and Luke 18:35-43. The passage in Matthew states that there are two blind men on the road from Jericho whom Jesus healed, but Mark and Luke discuss only one, and Mark alone gives us his name: Bartimaeus. This name is a combination of “bar” meaning “son” in Hebrew and “Timaeus” which comes from the Greek verb “timaio” meaning “I honor.” But the noun Timaeus (Timaios) in Greek was also the title of a Socratic dialogue by Plato on the nature of the physical world and human beings, written circa 360 BC. Participants in the dialogue include Socrates, Timaeus of Locri (after whom the work was named), Hermocrates, and Critias. The dialogue takes place the day after Socrates described his ideal state. Timaeus then presents the following: The nature of the physical worldThe purpose and properties of the universeThe creation of a “world-soul” (much like today’s pagan Gaia environmentalist hypothesis of a living Earth)The elements of fire, air, water, and earthThe human soul, anatomy, and perceptionThe transmigration of the soul (much like the pagan Hindu belief of reincarnation) Marcus Tullius Cicero translated the dialogue Timaeus from Greek into Latin circa 45 BC, and that translation was subsequently influential in late antiquity, especially on Latin-speaking Church Fathers such as Saint Augustine around AD 400, who did not appear to have access to the original Greek dialogue. The point in all this is that Plato’s dialogue Timaeus contained what mankind then knew about both the physical world and the nature of mankind. And surely Mark (the John Mark in the Acts of the Apostles and St. Paul’s Epistles), a Greek-speaking Gentile, would have known about and perhaps even have read this dialogue. So, in ascribing Bartimaeus as the name of the blind man on the road to Jericho, maybe John Mark was telling us that the son of the man who supposedly knows all about the universe and all about himself is actually blind about both. And finally, such a man recognizes his state of blindness, crying out, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Verses 51 and 52 in Mark chapter 10 state the following: 51 And Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” And the blind man said to him, “Master, let me receive my sight.” 52 And Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he received his sight and followed him on the way. It is faith – NOT knowledge, NOR dialogue – that gives the blind man his sight. Today mankind knows much about the nature of the universe from astrophysics and general relativity to quantum mechanics and the Standard Model. Mankind also knows much about his psychology and biology, reaching new heights of insight into the relationship between the functions of the brain and the thinking of the mind. But we are as spiritually blind as Bartimaeus was physically blind on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem, and as Timaeus was scientifically blind when discussing these matters with Socrates, Hermocrates, and Critias. Knowledge does NOT give sight; rather, faith does.