23rd. Sunday of the Year (B)
(Isaiah 35: 4-7; James
2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37)
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Jesus
was in a region – the Decapolis, on the other side of the Sea of Galilee – where
a sizeable Jewish population lived; they were, however, influenced by the alien
culture prevalent in those 10 cities (‘Decapolis’ is a Greek word meaning ten
towns or cities) whose citizens lived in a Greek-style society with Greco-Roman
government, and whose laws and religious beliefs – especially when taken
together with their moral standards and practices -- were regarded by devout
Israelites as ‘heathen‘.
There
was sufficiently close contact between Jews and Greeks to support business
activities and also to enable the ‘Greeks’ to acquire some awareness of and
acquaintance with Jewish customs and religious practices. Jesus had recently healed the daughter of a
pagan Syro-Phoenician woman who, you will surely remember, had said that even
the dogs were allowed to eat scraps from the children’s table. On that occasion
Jesus had healed the daughter at a distance, her mother having come alone to
beseech Jesus’ help.
Here,
however, there was a crowd of expectant people, probably Jews who, we are told:
brought
to Jesus one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and they begged
Him to put His hand on him. (Mark 7:32)
Jesus,
you will notice, did not seek out this man any more than He had sought out the young
girl whom He had healed because of her mother’s importunity despite His own
apparent unwillingness to do such a healing.
On this occasion, however, it was a crowd, probably most of them members
of the Chosen People to whom alone Jesus had been sent, who “begged” Him to lay
His hand on this deaf and speech-impaired man.
People
of God, recognize that this episode might well have brought a certain joy to
the heart of Jesus. The pagan woman had
come to Him for the sake of her natural daughter; here, there is a crowd of
people united in the faith of Israel asking for the healing of a fellow
believer. They did not, most probably, observe
their faith with sufficient care -- living and working, as they did, side by
side with pagans -- but for all that, they still kept firm hold of a most
important characteristic of their Jewish background, care for each other.
That
is something we should note, for it is very important for each and every one of
us to have friends who know how to invoke Jesus’ blessing on our behalf! Surely none of us here are among those
arrogant and puffed-up people who think they don’t need anyone’s help, who are
quite confident that their lives are good enough to withstand even the gaze of
God. Such people think that way, of
course, because they have a low idea of God, being totally ignorant of His
infinite holiness, imagining that they could look Him in the eye, so to speak,
without even any embarrassment, let alone any fear and trembling. For us, however, who are aware of the sublime
holiness of God and the sinfulness of humanity and of ourselves, we should
notice how often in the Gospel people are blessed and healed through the
intercession, help, of personal friends, and of those personally close to Jesus,
such as the Apostles. Dear People of God, it is very, very important that your
children understand the blessing of having good friends. Criminals have ‘friends’ who they call good
friends because they won’t tell on their mates; drug addicts too have so called
good ‘friends’ who won’t betray either their suppliers or their customers. Your children, dear People of God, need,
should have and should appreciate, good
friends who are good-living friends.
You
will be aware, in this respect, of the difference between a Catholic funeral --
with the Church filled with friends beseeching, in the Name of Jesus, God’s
mercy for their friend and loved one -- as compared with a funeral service
replete, not with prayers to God in the name of Jesus but, with very human
praise for the one departed, and with no little self-display by those singing
such emotional praises.
It
is faith alone which prepares for and can appreciate what is holy; and so, Jesus’
healing was not to be done openly before a somewhat motley crowd of observers
made up of far-from-fervently-practicing Jews, with a sprinkling of others
hoping to see, and ready to gawp at, some display of pagan magic. Moreover, Jesus would not only speak His word
of healing, He would also use His human flesh to touch the man, and so we are
told in our Gospel reading that it was only after having taken the deaf and speech-afflicted
man aside from the crowd that Jesus then:
Put
His finger in his ears, and spitting, touched his tongue,
then He looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’!
People
of God, we should clearly recognize and appreciate that Jesus uses human nature
still: we Catholics do not pray to a God who is just “up there”: we pray to, we
turn to, we love, a God Who is with us also here on earth, a God Who is with us
in His own flesh and blood in the Eucharist; indeed, in so far as we are true
disciples of Jesus, in so far as we live in His Body by His Spirit, we are all “flesh
of His flesh, blood of His Blood”. Because
Our Blessed Lord deliberately continues to use His Body for mankind’s salvation
through the instrumentality of His Church -- His Mystical Body and His Chosen
People -- He thus deigns to use us, His disciples, in His work of redemption even
today. Our Christian vocation in Mother
Church is therefore clear: as loving and obedient disciples of Jesus – the Son
of God made flesh for men -- we are called to become, each in our degree,
willing instruments for His continuing work of salvation: by our Catholic prayer
and worship, by our Christian giving and loving, indeed, by the very way “we live
and move and have our spiritual being” in
Him.
Finally,
notice those words:
He
looked up to heaven and groaned.
We
have the same mention of such a sigh or groan in the next episode of St. Mark’s
Gospel when, after miraculously feeding the four thousand:
The
Pharisees came out and began to dispute with Him, seeking from Him a sign from
heaven, testing Him. But He sighed
deeply in His spirit, and said, "Why does this generation seek a sign?
Assuredly, I say to you, no sign shall be given to this generation." (Mark
8:11-12)
That
‘groan’, that “sighing deeply”, expresses the deep compassion felt by Jesus all
mankind suffering so much under the burden of sin, as St. Paul tells us:
We
know that the whole creation groans and labours with birth pangs together until
now. Not only that, but we also who
have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves,
eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. Likewise, the Spirit also helps in our
weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the
Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be
uttered. (Romans
8:22-26)
However,
His sighing deeply, His groan, is also the result of His immense indignation
that His Father’s creation, originally so good and so beautiful, should have
become so deformed and ugly, thanks to the Devil’s lies and our complicity. This is why, People of God, we should, indeed
why we must, hate sin for dishonouring the Father of glory, for bringing such
sorrow to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and for the degradation and grief, the
pain and loss, it continues to bring about in the lives of all men and women, children,
and even those still in their mother’s womb.
Make
no mistake about it, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we are called to hate
sin; but also, as Christians, we must still love the sinner; that is, we
must convict sin (‘do good-ers’
cannot do that) yet without condemning
the sinner. As ever, the devil seeks to
be equal with God, he seeks to portray himself as holy and so he parodies
Christian love in this matter. The
world, at the devil’s instigation, says that in order to love the sinner we
should forget about, pass over, the sin: for example, Christians should, they
say, have such understanding for the pregnant girl or woman in difficulties of
whatever sort that we should think only of helping them, not about the evil or
the horror of abortion. Again, how many
parents are persuaded to keep peace – and, of course, make things easier for
themselves -- by saying nothing about their children’s faults, failings and
sins?
And
yet, People of God, only those who have never known anything of or about those
sighs of Jesus could adopt such supine and self-serving attitudes; only those
who have no awareness whatsoever of the honour due to the Father; and, indeed,
only those who do not, in fact, care anything about the ever increasing
sufferings of mankind, could possibly persuade themselves that such ‘love for
the sinner’ is in any way Christian: Christian love is only for the sinner
possibly turning toward Jesus, not for sinners deliberately turned away from
Him.
Jesus
is in our midst to heal the world because His loves us to the extent that He
gives Himself entirely to us and for us.
He wills that we, His People, have a like love for our neighbour, and
that we share in His saving work for the whole world. That love and that work demand that we, with
Jesus, hate sin, in all its forms:
for what agreement can there be between the God of holiness and the father of
lies, between Him Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and the one who,
through sin, injected death into the life-blood of mankind. St. Paul tells us explicitly:
Do
not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has
righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with
darkness? And what accord has Christ
with Belial? (2 Corinthians
6:14-15)
That
true love of neighbour which calls for our hatred of sin is the only way
whereby the vision and prophecy of Isaiah, heard in the first reading, can be
fulfilled; in Jesus and by His Spirit of Holiness working in and through His
Church:
Be
strong, do not fear! Behold, your God
will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God (which
includes, hating and destroying sin); He will come and save you." Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and
the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the
tongue of the dumb sing. For waters
shall burst forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert. The parched ground shall become a pool, and
the thirsty land springs of water. A
highway shall be there, and a road, and it shall be called the Highway of
Holiness. The unclean shall not
pass over it. (Isaiah 35:4-8)
