23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
First Reading: Is 35:4-7
Second Reading: Jas 2:1-5
Gospel Reading: Mk 7:31-37
This Sunday’s first reading prophesies the eyes of the blind shall open, the ears of the deaf shall open, the limbs of the lame leap, and the tongues of the speechless sing. In the Gospel reading, Jesus fulfills this prophecy.
With respect to spiritual life, we all need healing. As we say in the Communion Antiphon, “My soul is thirsting for the living God.” If we do not believe this, and live as though we believe it, then we are as sick as anyone Jesus ever cured.
If we see only the outward appearances, as St. James says in the second reading, then we are spiritually blind, unable to see that “God has chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him.”
We cannot cure this blindness by our own efforts, for the only kind of life we have by nature seems to be blind and deaf to the things of God. Only if we allow ourselves to be grafted onto Christ like a branch onto a vine can God’s life flow into us and enable us to see, hear, understand, and live the spiritual realities.
Like the saints, we become grafted onto Christ by belief, baptism, and the Holy Eucharist. In baptism, we were “born again of water and the Spirit,” as Christ told Nicodemus. We are re-born with God’s life and nourished by the Holy Eucharist, as we have heard in the Gospel readings for the last five Sundays.
Sin weakens this life. Mortal sin can even kill it: the word “mortal” comes from the Latin mors or mortis, which means “death.” Just as a mortal injury ends our human life, so a mortal sin kills our spiritual life. Nevertheless, even after a mortal injury, our spiritual life can be revived in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
St. Paul said that since the rebellion of Adam and Eve, “the flesh in its tendency is at enmity with God.” As the psalmist says, even our bodies pine for God “like a dry, weary land without water.”
At the end of a three-day conference in July 2000 on “Scientific Progress in Spiritual Research,” Dr. David B. Larson, then president of the United States National Institute for Health Care Research, said that the link between religion and medicine is gaining acceptance.
The conference featured reports from four working groups on the effects of religion on physical health, mental health, misuse of alcohol and drugs, and neuroscience. The groups, which comprised more than 70 U.S. medical and social science researchers, summarized their findings in a 22-page report.
Dr. Dale A. Matthews, associate professor of medicine at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, reported a link between religious belief, reduction in “illness-related risky behaviours,” and recovery after cardiac surgery. He said church attendance is associated with lower rates of coronary disease, emphysema, and cirrhosis.
Of course, we cannot practise religion – any religion – simply in order to enhance our health. In the practice of religion, we focus not on our health, nor even on ourselves, but on God.
Also, Pope St. John Paul II warned in his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, we must realize that our yearning for God, “present in all the religions of mankind,” cannot be fulfilled except by Jesus Christ, God made man. In him, he says, “religion is no longer a blind search for God,” but a response to a God “who reveals himself.” It is not we who find Christ; it is he who finds us.
This Sunday, let us pray, in the words of the hymn, “word that caused blind eyes to see, speak and heal our mortal blindness. Deaf we are: our healer be; loose our tongues to tell your kindness. Be our word in pity spoken; heal the world, by our sin broken.”
Father Hawkswell has now finished teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English, however the course remains available in both print and YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Starting Sept. 22, he will again teach the course in person on Sundays from 2 to 4 p.m. at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 Saint John Paul II Way, 33rd Avenue and Willow Street, Vancouver, and Mondays from 10 a.m. to noon in St. Anthony’s Church Hall, 2347 Inglewood Avenue, West Vancouver. The course is entirely free of charge and no pre-registration is necessary.
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