The Power of Desire

Michiel Peeters - In the Gospel, Jesus heals many people he meets along his road. Only of one of them we have the name: Bar-Timaeus, the son of Timaeus. He must have made a certain impression on the first Christians, that they remembered his name. Maybe because he is such a strong witness to the greatness of human desire.

Jesus says in the Gospel: “God is not the God of the dead but of the living.” God wants us to be alive. And elsewhere: “Everyone who enters [the Kingdom of God, the depth of reality, the truth of reality], does so with [some sort of] violence.” Bar-Timaeus was such a “man alive.” He is blind and he has a strong desire to see.

When there is a possibility for this—however unlikely—he wants to try it. When they tell him Jesus of Nazareth is passing by (someone said to be crazy, but also, to have healed many people), his strong desire is awakened and makes him cry out: “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.”

For our desire is awakened by the presence of something that might be able to answer to it. When our question is awakened, it means we are in the presence of a possible answer.

People rebuke him, tell him to be silent: behave, there is no need to shout, there is no real possibility for change, this man is interesting but surely he cannot help you with your deep desire, it does not have a real answer, surely not in this man. But—and here Bar-Timaeus shows how much he is a “man alive”: how deep his desire is, and how stubbornly he sticks to it—“he kept calling out all the more.”

Then Jesus notices him, asks him what he wants (Christ asks us what we want: he educates our desire, wants to make us conscious of what we are and what we need, for this is the beginning of our liberation); and then He heals him.

Subsequently, we can see the depth of Bar-Timaeus’s desire, of his humanity; why we can call him a “master of human desire.” It’s in the last phrase of today’s Gospel: “Immediately he received his sight—and followed him on the way.” Many were healed by Jesus.

But few understood what this healing really was. For being able to see, was not enough. As a friend of ours, having been unexpectedly and inexplicably cured from cancer, wrote in her diary: “I have this great desire […] to be happy; I’ve discovered that not even a miracle can fill my heart.” “Not even a miracle can fill my heart.” Bar-Timaeus understood this: if you, Jesus, can do this, then I want more of it.

Better: I want more of you. Like all great personalities—not great in power or richness, but in humanity—when touched by Christ, he felt that this healing, however great, was the sign of a greater help he needed—and had to do with, could be found in that person that healed him. As his desire (to see) had been the sign of a greater desire, a desire to live, a desire to realize himself, his desire to be happy.

Therefore, after his healing, Bar-Timaeus became a follower of Jesus. In order to be really fulfilled, to be really healed. This is why someone becomes a Christian. Unexpectedly, a deep desire of ours, that nobody was able to cure, that people normally try to silence, was taken seriously. And while it was taken seriously, it grew.

And then we understood that we want more of it: that this man, this human reality, that took us seriously in one thing, can help me in more. And then someone begins to follow, and can see her or his life change. Let’s learn from our friend Bar-Timaeus to give credit to our desire.

The author has not revised the text translation.
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