Homily OT (B) 23rd Sunday - Ephphatha

My Homily, September 9, 2012

Good morning, my name is Deacon Andrew, and like Fr. Thomas, I am from the United States. In fact we entered the seminary together, and this is the first time I attend a Mass of his, so this is a beautiful grace for me. God willing, I will be ordained a priest in December of this year. So, I am very grateful for your prayers. Please excuse my Italian. If I make a few mistakes, as Blessed John Paul II said, you can correct me.

The Gospel, too, mentions a man with a speech impediment. I will never forget my sister’s dissatisfaction with Jesus’ choice of words. She is a speech pathologist who works with autistic children, and she said “impediment” is such an ugly, humiliating word. He should have said “speech delay” or “stammer,” anything but impediment.

But Mark obviously wasn’t trying to use language that would be politically correct in the 21st century. He had a theological reason to use the word he did. The Greek word to describe the man’s condition, mogilalon, is only found in one other place in the Bible—in the Greek translation of today’s Isaiah passage: “the tongue of the mute (mogilalon) will sing.”

What a coincidence! No, Mark is arguing powerfully for Christ’s divinity by showing how he fulfills the Old Testament prophecies.

Here is your God, he comes to save you.

the ears of the deaf be cleared;

then the tongue of the mute will sing

What then should the crowds conclude about Jesus, who also opens ears and looses tongues? “Here is your God!”

But the man wasn’t just mute (mogilalon). He was also deaf. Can you imagine what his life must have been like? He couldn’t ask for cup of water. He couldn’t listen to a friend tell a joke. What kind of friendships could he have had? Do we appreciate the depth of this man’s plight?

Just yesterday I was cutting the hair of one of my brothers who has an ear infection. Br Joseph was telling me what a bother it has been. He hasn’t been able to hear well out of one ear. He said, We don’t know what we have till it’s gone.

And yet we must strive to enter into this Gospel with faith and put ourselves in the position of the deaf mute because I am convinced that God has done for each of us what He did for him. He has laid his hands of each of you here and said, “Ephphatha!” He has opened our ears to hear the Word of God, and loosed our tongues that we might sing praises to Him.

St. Mark helps our imagination: the drama is very physical and personal. Our focus is drawn to a hand, a finger, ears, a tongue, spitting. What’s the point? Why is Mark so corporeal? In Jesus, God has truly come in the flesh.

He’s highlighting the crude reality of the Incarnation. For Catholics, as Tertullian put it, Caro cardo salutis -- the flesh is the hinge of salvation.

This idea was shocking to early pagan converts to Christianity, especially those steeped in Greek philosophy, which had often disparaged the body. Even the old myths about gods interacting with men never conceived of the possibility that the one true God, Creator of all things, would love us so much that he would actually become incarnate, become one of us.

That God would take a deaf-mute by the hand, lead him away from the crowds, touch him on the tongue and ears, and - in such a human, physical way - cure him, that God himself would get dirty in order to make us clean: this is Christianity; this is a uniquely and marvelously Catholic view of God.

But Jesus isn’t just physical, he’s also personal. Jesus “took him off by himself away from the crowd.” Jesus was not trying to impress the masses with a spectacular show of power. So intent was he on being discrete, he even commanded that he tell no one about the miraculous healing.

Perhaps Jesus was using reverse psychology. “If I tell them to tell no one, he’ll tell twice as many people.” I don’t think so. I think he was being sincere.

Why the secret? Some would say that he was trying to prevent the crowds from getting to big. Jesus was buying time and preventing the uproar that led to his Passion from exploding prematurely. Yes, that is an important practical consideration and is probably part of the reason. But I think there is a deeper reason.

I want to emphasize this point for us who are religious. Sometimes we think our value lies in being useful for God. We priests try to spice up our homilies to move the audience. If you share your vocation story, you know what I mean. You want others to be spiritually edified. We love being apostles. We love being the light of the world.

As good as that can be, God often blesses us in secret. Why? As a good Father, he simply longs to lavish his blessings upon us and fill us with wisdom, love and grace. He actually loves each one of us that much. “Tell no one” he says, so that we know that we are not merely means to an end, preaching better sermons, delivering better testimonies, drawing bigger crowds. No! We are ends in ourselves.

We can’t be professional pragmatists about the mission. We can fixate on questions like “How many people received my newsletter, participated in the big event, contributed to the collection?”

Instead we should pray, “Lord, open my ears. I want to indulge in your word.” This isn’t selfishness or self-indulgence. This is embracing God’s will. We indulge his mercy and love. And when we let ourselves bathe in his blessings, boy, can he then use us.

But perhaps it’s time we focus more on being blessed by God then being used by God, because before we are his apostles we are his children.

So now that we have feasted upon God’s Word hear at the ambo, let us turn to the altar and feast upon the Word made Flesh, on Jesus Christ our Lord, whose flesh is given as Bread. Here too the drama is physical and personal.

As we receive him, let us ask him to open our hearts to his Ephphatha that his Spirit may perfect our praise. Let us then say with Isaiah, Here is our God, He comes to save us.

23nd Sunday in OT (B)

Reading 1 Is 35:4-7a

Thus says the LORD: Say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not! Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing. Streams will burst forth in the desert, and rivers in the steppe. The burning sands will become pools, and the thirsty ground, springs of water.

Ps 146:7, 8-9, 9-10

R. (1b) Praise the Lord, my soul! The God of Jacob keeps faith forever, secures justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets captives free.

The LORD gives sight to the blind; the LORD raises up those who were bowed down. The LORD loves the just; the LORD protects strangers. The fatherless and the widow the LORD sustains, but the way of the wicked he thwarts. The LORD shall reign forever; your God, O Zion, through all generations. Alleluia.

Reading 2 Jas 2:1-5

My brothers and sisters, show no partiality as you adhere to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. For if a man with gold rings and fine clothes comes into your assembly, and a poor person in shabby clothes also comes in, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say, "Sit here, please, " while you say to the poor one, "Stand there, " or "Sit at my feet, " have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil designs? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Did not God choose those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he promised to those who love him?

Gospel Mk 7:31-37

Again Jesus left the district of Tyre and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, into the district of the Decapolis. And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him off by himself away from the crowd. He put his finger into the man's ears and, spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, "Ephphatha!"-- that is, "Be opened!" -- And immediately the man's ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly. He ordered them not to tell anyone. But the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it. They were exceedingly astonished and they said, "He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak."

God Is Active in the World

One absolutely unique doctrine of our Catholic faith is the incarnation.

Even the old myths about gods interacting with men never conceived of the possibility that the one true God, Creator of all things, would love us so much that he would actually become incarnate, become one of us.

That God would take a deaf-mute by the hand, lead him away from the crowds, touch him on the tongue and ears, and - in such a human, physical way - cure him, thus fulfilling the wonderful prophecies that we heard in the First Reading... That God himself would get dirty in order to make us clean:

this is Christianity; this is a uniquely and marvelously Catholic view of God.

Telltale Signs of a Catholic Home

This is why you can always tell when you visit a Catholic home.

In every healthy Catholic home, there is some kind of physical manifestation of their Catholic identity.

And it is not just a label or a superstition.

Rather, it's a way for the family to express and reinforce their faith, just as a military outpost, even a small one, will fly the flag of their country, expressing and reinforcing the deep reasons behind their military activity: protection of the homeland.We are members of the Church militant, and every Catholic family, every Catholic household, is an outpost of Christ's Kingdom, living and defending the Christian way of life.

And so, we use visible, tangible signs and symbols, which the Church calls sacramentals, in the same way that Jesus used physical contact to cure the deaf-mute.

Some homes have an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in a prominent place, with a small candle lit beside it.Some Catholic families have a small statue of Mary in the yard or the entrance way.Many families have a holy water font in the house.Most Catholics keep a crucifix on every bedroom wall.Many Catholics have a prayer room or a prayer corner consisting of a small table decorated almost like an altar, with a holy image and a candle.I know of one family [a Brazilian family] that keeps the Bible on a stand near the door to the garage, and whenever they go out they kiss the Bible, renewing their faith in God's protection and their commitment to spread the Gospel in the world.

As we continue with this Mass, in which God will continue his loving action in and through our lives, let's thank him for being so close to us, and promise that we will always do our best to stay close to him.

All Things Well

Readings: Isaiah 35:4-7 Psalm 146:7-10 James 2:1-5 Mark 7:31-37

The incident in today’s Gospel is recorded only by Mark. The key line is what the crowd says at the end: “He has done all things well.” In the Greek, this echoes the creation story, recalling that God saw all the things he had done and declared them good (see Genesis 1:31).

Mark also deliberately evokes Isaiah’s promise, which we hear in today’s First Reading that God will make the deaf hear and the mute speak. He even uses a Greek word to describe the man’s condition (mogilalon = “speech impediment”) that’s only found in one other place in the Bible—in the Greek translation of today’s Isaiah passage, where the prophet describes the “dumb” singing.

The crowd recognizes that Jesus is doing what the prophet had foretold. But Mark wants us to see something far greater—that, to use the words from today’s First Reading: “Here is your God.”

Notice how personal and physical the drama is in the Gospel. Our focus is drawn to a hand, a finger, ears, a tongue, spitting. In Jesus, Mark shows us, God has truly come in the flesh.

What He has done is to make all things new, a new creation (see Revelation 21:1-5). As Isaiah promised, He has made the living waters of baptism flow in the desert of the world. He has set captives free from their sins, as we sing in today’s Psalm. He has come that rich and poor might dine together in the Eucharistic feast, as James tells us in today’s Epistle.

He has done for each of us what He did for that deaf mute. He has opened our ears to hear the Word of God, and loosed our tongues that we might sing praises to Him.

Let us then, in the Eucharist, again give thanks to our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. Let us say with Isaiah, Here is our God, He comes to save us. Let us be rich in faith, that we might inherit the kingdom promised to those who love Him.