XXIII Sunday in Ordinary Time (Cycle B) – September 5, 2021 Isaiah 35:4-7ª / Psalm 146 / James 2: 1-5 / Mark 7: 31-37
Our Catholic Coogs community is blessed every year by students studying in the fields of communication disorders and ASL (American Sign Language). They would be the first to remind us that one of the more frustrating aspects of deafness or hearing loss is the feeling of isolation brought on by this condition. When one has total or partial hearing loss, they can feel closed off from the community, social isolation.
In my youth, I saw how my dear grandmother struggled with hearing loss. However, she did not allow the isolation to set in and through her growing disability, my grandmother formed new friendships and networks with others in similar situations like I never would have imagined. Now, from my experience of hearing diminishment, I am starting to recognize this, but in a more personal sense.
To some, it might seem to be a minor detail in today’s Gospel reading from the seventh chapter of Luke, but notice how the man is presented to Jesus for healing: “And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impedimentand begged him to lay his hand on him” (Mark 7: 32). Thankfully, it certainly appears the man did not suffer social isolation. His condition actually serves as a rallying point for his friends and neighbors.
While the focus of Jesus in today’s reading is to heal one man, he intends for the Heavenly Father’s care and love to nourish and inspire all present. For Christ, individual interventions are meant to demonstrate to one person and all humanity that God acts in the world and in our lives and is concerned about our well-being. When we recognize and appreciate his loving-kindness then we are more disposed to act in the same manner towards our neighbor, especially many who face bodily limitations or disabilities.
Jesus is simple and direct in his loving concern for the man in the story. “Ephphatha! Be opened!” He doesn’t stop there, though. All of us face limitations of one sort or another and, most assuredly, all of us need to be opened more in order to better perceive and appreciate the presence of Christ in our lives and in the world around us.
How might you need to be opened even if you do not have any noticeable hearing or communication disorders? Hearing diminishment is a reality for me but I know to be opened entails much more. Perhaps the opening we need is that of our hearts and minds. Perhaps the opening of the eyes and ears of our soul is necessary so we better perceive how Christ beckons us to trust and follow him and calls us to have concern for others.
Such need for opening should prompt us to recognize the causes. In the midst of the stress, distractions and movement that fill up our days, what are we missing? Our world is bent on greed and domination and increasingly violent. Pop culture, visual media, music and social media can all be like a barrage of noise and stimuli crashing upon us.
Bishop Robert Barron cautions against the danger of worldly and secular voices that surround us when he writes: “So powerful and insistent are these voices that they drown out, easily enough, the tiny whispering voice of God.”¹
One of my favorite literary figures, 20th Century Catholic author Flannery O’Connor, had strong feelings on this reality, which gave purpose to her writing. Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, former master general of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), points out that O’Connor “believed that our contemporary culture deadened our imagination, so that a sense of the transcendent was lost.”² Because of this, Flannery O’Connor’s works reveal how society often forgets and rejects Christ only to be pursued and permeated by his grace.
Christ seeks to open us in the ways we become closed. He reveals himself to us and to the world in the loud, pain-filled lamentations of people who suffer under the weight of human cruelty and in the unspoken and inaudible cries of the lonely.
If our hearts are not opened by the Lord’s mercy and compassion, we will likely never recognize such needs and demands of love. It matters little if the voice of God is a shout or a whisper, with noise or silence, without love we will never notice. When our hearts and minds are opened by God’s mercy and compassion, then we will notice and perceive what he means to communicate with us.
It is not about the capacity to hear, but with our willingness to listen, our willingness to forgive and ask for forgiveness. It is not about our abilities but his presence finding welcome in us and our heart being a place where others encounter him and his mercy.
Peace in Christ Jesus! Fr. Charles Johnson, O.P.
Notes:
¹ Bishop Robert Barron, A Light Unto My Path meditation (Magnificat, September 2021). ² Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, O.P., Alive in God (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2019), 7.