Homilies

23rd SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME: HEARING AND LISTENING

IF WE TRY to take a look at it, there are three areas in our lives that our readings today remind us. The First Reading focuses on courage (not to fear); the Second Reading on impartiality; and the gospel reading on healing.  

The people to whom the prophecy of Isaiah is addressed in our First Reading, are in exile, distant from their homes and standing on the edge of life, quite alone. The prophet Isaiah offers words of encouragement for those who have frightened heart, “fear not!”  As we know fear is a terrible thing. It can paralyze us and later stops us in pursuing what we would like to do.  God, in Isaiah’s words, is inviting us to stop and listen to His words. The prophet predicts that things are going to get better so the people should buck up and take courage. 

God is about to come and in his coming he will cure the blind, lame and deaf as well as those with impediments of speech. God will change everything as soon as He arrives. Even the deserts will have water.

Everything that was proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah was fulfilled in Jesus, as stated in the Gospel of Mark in particular. If we notice, this section begins with the healing of a deaf man and ends with the healing of a blind man. These are not just miracle stories about Jesus’ power but at the same time message itself. Jesus has just been in the Gentile area of Tyre and Sidon (on the Mediterranean coast in modern Lebanon) and has moved on to the area of the Decapolis (Ten Cities), on the east bank of the Jordan River. As our professor would say, it was basically a Gentile, a non-Jewish area. 

Ephphatha! Be opened!"  These dramatic words of Jesus are the climax of the story.  Immediately the man was healed: he could hear and speak perfectly. Because of that the people were reminded of the lovely words from Isaiah in the First Reading: "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unsealed, then the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongues of the dumb sing for joy." The future promised by the prophet has now arrived. I remember an author who says; the healing of that man reminds us of the Sacrament of Baptism. Our ears are opened to hear the Word of God and our tongues are loosened to speak about Christ to others. Baptism as we know from our catechism is a sign of our full incorporation into the Body of Christ, his Church. It involves a total commitment on our part to the way of life that Jesus calls us to follow. A constituent part of that commitment is a growing openness to hear what Jesus says to us and a growing ability to be able to share our faith with others. Unlike the man in the Gospel story we don’t normally find ourselves immediately endowed with these gifts. 

Many of us are not very good at either listening or speaking, especially if it concerns God. Some have even stopped hearing. There is difference between listening and hearing.  When we are listening we allow what we hear to change something within us or about us, or about others. In one of the well known Catholic schools I visited, I noticed that even in this institution, the students are not so much engaged in listening.  If a beggar would come, they started to disappear one by one.  During mass, the students were preoccupied with their own businesses. We were given “Catholic education” and we now feel there is nothing more to learn. We may not realize it but we have become deaf! And, being deaf, we cannot speak either. We have nothing to say, thus, nothing to share. There are also Christian professionals, government officials and other personalities who are highly qualified in their secular profession but when it comes to their faith they are basically illiterate. What is really distressing is that, in their ignorance, they don't even know Christianity at all.

To hear the Word of God and not to proclaim it is, in the mind of the Gospel, a contradiction. As Jesus would say it, there is not much point in lighting a lamp and then hiding it away. A light is supposed to share its light. In the Gospel, really to hear the Word of God is to carry it out. "Hearing" implies: listening, understanding, making the message one’s own and living it out in word and action.

Although Jesus tried to restrain the man in today’s Gospel, the cured man and all those around proclaimed what had happened everywhere they went. Really the man just had to do it. Now he can hear and able to share with others what he had heard and experienced. If we were really excited about the Good News of Jesus Christ, if we were really excited about the experience of having the “Christian vision of life,” we would have to do exactly the same. 

The second reading, from the Letter of James, brings this whole program down to earth.  The teaching of James does not remain an abstraction.  Who is not moved to reflect upon assumptions taken for granted, when confronted by the simple example of the "beautifully dressed" person and the poor person "in shabby clothes"?  But for James this is more than a moral story; it is a story about discipleship – learning, in the company of Jesus, to identify with the ways of God: "those who are poor according to the world God chose to be rich in faith and to be heirs to the kingdom".

Yes, we are often deaf and we are often dumb. We have lost the capacity both to hear and to speak. We have lost the ability to recognize the voice of God calling to us in the many changing situations, both good and bad of our society. God is shouting at us through the happenings described in our newspapers and television programs. Fear not, God is coming to intervene (heal). He will reverse the fate of the deprived.  Be impartial… do not be the cause of deprivation (sickness) of the poor. Let us allow ourselves to be healed. Let other people carry you to God. He will heal you from your deprivation to hear and speak. He will teach doing and appreciate what our parents, children and teachers, priests, are saying. 

So, let us pray today for the gift of hearing, to hear the voice of God calling to us in everything that will happen this day. Let us pray for the gift of speech, that is, to be so filled with the liberating experience of knowing Jesus that we simply cannot refrain from sharing that experience with all those around us. 


                                  [Sem. BRG
                                   MSP Seminary, Tagaytay City]

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