23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, B September 8, 2024
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
Have you ever watched those videos of the first time a person experiences something we all take for granted? Like those glasses that correct color blindness? Or the Cochlear implants that allow someone to hear for the first time? Imagine never hearing. Then, suddenly there’s a rush of sound, a new dimension to life, a whole new level of belonging.
You know what happens almost every time? The person lights up and then crumbles into tears, overwhelmed with the newness and joy, sometimes even a little embarrassed. I get choked up just watching it.
But maybe not every time. We’ve gotten kinda used to our marvelous technological solutions – there’s always another video of something “amazing.” Imagine 2000 years ago, though, when being deaf meant always missing out. No sign language, no accessibility standards. Then comes Jesus. The crowd begs him to do something. Like millions of YouTube viewers, this crowd is eager to see something amazing.
But Jesus doesn’t care what the crowd wants. He sees this man. He knows, 2000 years before implants and videos, what it’s like for a person to hear for the first time. It is immense. It is personal. It really ought to be private. So, he takes him away from the gawking crowd to a place where he can experience this moment in its fullness without the embarrassment of becoming an unwitting spectacle to be shared and liked and commented upon. He preserves the intimacy of this moment. And that so often is the way of Christ. Intimate, personal, genuine.
And yet, this private moment has its place in the cosmic plan of salvation. It is shared with us now. It directly fulfills a prophecy, the exact same prophecy we hear in the first reading. It foretells God’s coming to bring vindication and salvation to his people. By clearing the “ears of the deaf,” Jesus is revealing some of his identity – that he is not just the messiah, but that he is God, the Divine Son of the Eternal Father.
The God of the universe, beyond all space and time, made himself into a specific man at a single time in history where he healed people and spoke to them as individuals. The infinite power of the finger of God was “wasted” on the time it took for Jesus to stick his finger in the ear of a one deaf man. Why not snap your fingers and heal everyone? Because our God is a Trinity, which means that at the heart of his identity is relationship, a personal and intimate exchange between the Three Divine Persons who are yet one God.
And relationship has to be particular. It has to be specific. For human beings with their bodies and limits, it is concrete, physical, and even a little gross. It’s true with two ordinary people who love each other and it’s true of God’s love for us. It might seem strange, yet we have the opportunity to receive the very body and blood of that same man on our tongues every Sunday, every day even. This particularity, this physical intimacy is a part of the scandal of God’s love.
This paradoxical dynamic between the personal intimacy of the miracle and the public proclamation of divine salvation points us to a very important part of our own relationship with God… and with the whole Church. Though we have a worldwide organization with all its money, power, and publicity, God always sees each of us. The Truth and the Sacraments and Scripture all come to us through the institution of the Church and through the community, yet God encounters each of us individually in that.
Some of the most profound work a priest does is in the inefficient, time-consuming, and often tedious practice of hearing confessions one at a time. The Eucharist is consecrated on a single altar and we have to take the time to distribute it to each person. Why not wave our hands and absolve everyone? Why not just make the Eucharist appear in your hands? Because we are human and God loves us as humans and became a human being in order to manifest that divine-human love to us.
So, what does that mean? What do you do with that? Take care of your business. You want fix the country? Take care of your actual neighbors. You want to change the world? Go home and love your family. You want to save the Church from all the mess? Then be a friend to the parishioner two pews over whose name you’ve never even heard. Your private prayer really does help the world. Your hidden fasts and sacrifices really do benefit the whole church. Your intimate acts of kindness and charity to unimportant people truly are more important than clever media campaigns and pretty speeches. Jesus lived 33 years, yet we know very, very few details from that time. You may well live only 25 years and die in obscurity but be holier and more effective than cardinals and popes at spreading the Gospel.
Do you want to be successful? Do you want to be happy? Then be holy! Be holy as a personal friend of Jesus Christ. Be holy as a faithful follower of the Church, even when her leaders are not faithful. Be a Christian who loves the person in front of them, not as an idea, but as a person with flesh and blood, hopes and fears, body and soul.
That is the key to evangelization, to the ACTS retreats, to my pastoral plan for this parish: personal encounter. You are here, you have heard Jesus at least a little. But how many people in your family, how many in your workplace, how many in your circle of influence are like this deaf man, totally unaware of this whole dimension of reality you and I take for granted? Do you know what it’s like to live in this world without Christ? Without the sound of hope, the vision of meaning that our faith gives us? Do you really want others to experience it?
Maybe you can’t literally stick a finger in their ear and give them physical hearing, but perhaps you can doing something just as uncomfortable and poke them with an honest interest in their faith or lack thereof. Don’t do it publicly or in front of a camera. Identify one person in your life who needs to get a little closer to Christ. Then walk with them. Do it one to one, over time, and without strings attached. Pray for that one person, by name. Groan to God for them. Pray for them at least as often as you talk to them.
The gospel ends with the crowds exclaiming “He has done all things well.” He really has. But if there’s no one to tell people about it, if you don’t tell the people in your life about him, how will they hear?