Today's gospel presents us with a blind man who was surrounded by limitations. His blindness is a big obstacle to his social, economic, political and even religious life. The gospel rightly described him as sitting by the road side, begging. Yes, that is a sign of a marginalized person; he cannot be in the center. This blind man believed the imposed narrative about himself until the day he made up his mind to overcome his limitation and cried out to Jesus for help.
But he was faced by another obstacle. The people around him wanted him to shut up, but he was determined on having a new life. He cried harder and Jesus heard him and called him. He was happy and wanted to go, but then came another obstacle. It was winter and he needed his cloak to cover himself from cold. His determination led him to throw away the cloak and rush to Jesus. But meeting Jesus was not the end of temptations because the encounter has its own problem. Jesus asked him: "What do you want me to do for you? In his mind so many suggestions came up: tell him that you have not eaten, tell him to give you money and so on. He overcame these discordant voices and went to the essential. His response was "Master, I want to see." Jesus immediately healed him, and he followed him at once as one of his disciples.
In this man we see one who fought his way out of the limitations that pulled him down from moving forward with life. He fought his fears, he fought the people around him, he fought his attachment to his material possession symbolized by his cloak, and he fought his tendency for easy solutions to big problems.
You may sincerely desire to be a disciple of Jesus, but you are still held down by several forces. These forces must be dominated as the blind man, Bartimeus, did with his own obstacles. You may, for example, wish to be an active member of your faith community, but your attachment to your cloak may be an obstacle to realizing this desire such that you always believe that you do not have time. No time to come early to Mass, no time to join an association in the church, no time to go for confession, no time to read and meditate the Word of God and so on. You must revolt against these limitations if your ambition is to be realized. Like Bartimeus you must ignore those around you who make you believe that you do not need to go to Jesus. You must drop your attachment to your comfort and take bold and clear steps to be counted among the disciples of Jesus.