First Reading
Isaiah 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.
Second Reading
James 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 Cycle Cycle B
Mark 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.”
Your God will come to save you! What a wonderful image we are given by the Prophet Isaiah in today’s first reading! And Isaiah seems to mean that no matter what kind of mess or difficulty we are in, God will come to save us. God is capable of changing everything: God can give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to those without speech, good health and physical well-being to those who lack it; God can change the climate and put water where it is needed.
Probably the most important aspect of God’s action, however, is that God can change the human heart. For sure, all of us want miracles and want all that is bad in our lives and in our world to be changed to God. We should want that! On the other hand, we need to recognize in our human history that most of us tend to forget God once we have everything that we want. We turn God into the provider of good things and when we have good things, we no longer want or need God and don’t even think about God.
Years ago someone told me that the greatest miracles done in the shrines of Mary throughout the world were not the physical cures, but the way in which the hearts of those who came were changed. Instead of physical cures, often people came to accept their illnesses and offer them to the Lord. Instead of children restored to health, often there was a healing in the way the family thought of the child’s disease.
We might ask ourselves today in this Sunday celebration: what would I prefer? Would I like some physical or material reality changed or would I prefer my heart to be changed? The reply will tell us a lot about ourselves!
Of course we can remember the Syrophoenician woman in Mark’s Gospel who would not be content without changing the heart of our Lord! She was able to beg for the cure of her daughter even as her own heart was changed.
In today’s Gospel, also from Mark, we hear of the cure of the man who was deaf and had a speech impediment. Again we might ask ourselves how much value there is in physical cures if one’s heart is not given over to God. When we think about this, it is in no way meant to make less of the physical cures and healings. Those physical cures and healing are really important in both the Hebrew Scriptures and in the New Testament. Such cures and healing show forth the power and compassion of our God. But they are also meant to point each of us to the heart of God so that we can believe.
It would be easy today to think that science will solve all of the problems of our world. Many have thought that for a long time. Yet science and economy and human endeavor seem not to be able to find peace and pursue it. We humans seem unable to create hearts that truly seek the good of one another. The image of Christ on the Cross is lost on our world today.
Yet, and this is our invitation today, you and I can live the reality of Christ’s death and show the glory of His resurrection by the way we live. If each one of us can allow the mystery of God’s love and compassion to penetrate us, there is still hope for a world that prefers darkness to light.