September 5, Sunday  

Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lord, Open Our Ears and Lips!

 

We live in era of communication explosion: fax, E-mail, internet or web, and so on. And at the same time, it is an age of isolation and loneliness of people. What people have is information, and what they have lost is personal relations. In this Eucharist we pray to the Lord, to open our ears. that we may again listen to one another and to God speaking to us. May we also learn again to speak to one another, person to person.

 

First Reading: Isaiah 35:4-7

Energize the limp hands,
    strengthen the rubbery knees.
Tell fearful souls,
    “Courage! Take heart!
God is here, right here,
    on his way to put things right
And redress all wrongs.
    He’s on his way! He’ll save you!”

Blind eyes will be opened,
    deaf ears unstopped,
Lame men and women will leap like deer,
    the voiceless break into song.
Springs of water will burst out in the wilderness,
    streams flow in the desert.
Hot sands will become a cool oasis,
    thirsty ground a splashing fountain.
Even lowly jackals will have water to drink,
    and barren grasslands flourish richly.

 

Second Reading: James 2:1-5

The Royal Rule of Love

My dear friends, don’t let public opinion influence how you live out our glorious, Christ-originated faith. If a man enters your church wearing an expensive suit, and a street person wearing rags comes in right after him, and you say to the man in the suit, “Sit here, sir; this is the best seat in the house!” and either ignore the street person or say, “Better sit here in the back row,” haven’t you segregated God’s children and proved that you are judges who can’t be trusted?

 Listen, dear friends. Isn’t it clear by now that God operates quite differently? He chose the world’s down-and-out as the kingdom’s first citizens, with full rights and privileges. This kingdom is promised to anyone who loves God. And here you are abusing these same citizens! Isn’t it the high and mighty who exploit you, who use the courts to rob you blind? Aren’t they the ones who scorn the new name—“Christian”—used in your baptisms?

 

Gospel: Mark 7:31-37

Then he left the region of Tyre, went through Sidon back to Galilee Lake and over to the district of the Ten Towns. Some people brought a man who could neither hear nor speak and asked Jesus to lay a healing hand on him. He took the man off by himself, put his fingers in the man’s ears and some spit on the man’s tongue. Then Jesus looked up in prayer, groaned mightily, and commanded, “Ephphatha!—Open up!” And it happened. The man’s hearing was clear and his speech plain—just like that.

Jesus urged them to keep it quiet, but they talked it up all the more, beside themselves with excitement. “He’s done it all and done it well. He gives hearing to the deaf, speech to the speechless.”

 

Prayer
God our Father,
you wait for us to be open to you, to people,
and to all that is true, beautiful and good.
Let your Spirit open our ears
to the liberating word of your Son.
Let him open our hearts and hands
to everyone who needs us.
Let him open our lips,
that we may proclaim everywhere
the marvels you do for us.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

Reflection:  The New Creation

Prophet Jeremiah calls Israel a “stupid and senseless people, who have eyes and do not see, who have ears and do not hear” (Jer 5:21)! Deafness, in the Bible, is the image of the rejection of God’s word. It shows the condition of a person seduced by misleading voices. It is a severe disease, but the Lord has promised to heal it. The place where the miraculous healing of the deaf and mute person is set in Decapolis, a pagan territory. Chapter 5 of the Gospel according to Mark speaks of Jesus in this same region driving out a legion of demons from a possessed man. In today’s gospel, the sick to be healed is “a deaf and mute man.” The healing work of Jesus marks the beginning of new relationships between peoples, religions, and cultures. Anyone who does not dialogue with others, who remain close in his world, who thinks he has nothing more to learn, is a deaf and dumb person. The deaf and dumb in today’s Gospel represents all those who have not opened their ears to the voice of God and refuse to profess their faith in Him. Jesus takes him away from the crowd. When in the midst of the crowd, there are too many noises – ideologies of the world – which prevent him from listening to the voice of God. To listen to the voice of God, it is important to come away from the opposing ideologies and noises of the outside world. Jesus puts his finger into the man’s ears” (v. 33). The finger of God is a symbol of the power of God. In Luke 11:20, Jesus tells that he “drives out demons by the finger of God.” In the sacrament of baptism, this act is repeated with a prayer: “Lord Jesus who made the deaf hear and the mute speak, grant us the privilege of listening soon to your Word and to profess faith in you.” Among the Jewish traditions, saliva was considered a concentrated breath. Breath belongs to God. Touching the tongue of the deaf-mute with his saliva, Jesus gives him his breath, his Spirit. The sick man – the sick humanity is commanded Ephphatha – be opened – to listen to the voice of God and to profess their faith in Him. “He has done all things well,” the crowd cries out. Similar words were used in the Book of Genesis after completing each creation – “God saw that it was good. Luke presents to us the new man – the new creation of God – who listens to God’s voice and speaks his gospel to the world. What are the noises and ideologies that prevent us from listening to God’s voice today?

 

Video available on Youtube:  The New Creation