Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time / Msgr. Owen F. Campion
The Sunday Readings
The first reading for Mass this weekend is from the Book of Isaiah. It speaks of the blind, deaf and lame.
Today’s culture is different from that in which this section of Isaiah was written. Physical impairments now can be managed in many cases. People with physical challenges now lead lives that would only have been dreams long ago in ancient Israel.
Moreover, today no moral scorn accompanies physical disabilities. People today know that these impairments have physical explanations. Genetics, disease or injury cause such difficulties.
In Isaiah’s time, transportation was limited. So, the inability to walk was a major disadvantage. Even more of a disadvantage was being unable to hear or see. Communications for almost everyone were verbal or visual.
Immobility, blindness, lameness or deafness therefore severely isolated people. As much as at any time in human history, being alone was a fearful thought. It also was a peril.
Finally, physical impairments were seen as the consequence of sin. Physical inadequacies, and ultimately death, came because of Adam’s sin. Individually, personal sin weakens, impairs and afflicts people.
God, in his great mercy and love, restores vision, hearing and the ability to act freely and thus restores a place for repentant sinners in the faith community. Isaiah displays his typical eloquence in this passage. Because of God’s goodness, the mute not only will speak but sing! The lame not only will walk, but they will leap like a stag! Springs will cool burning sands!
The Epistle of St. James is the source of the second reading. The New Testament mentions several men with this name. Likely, other men by the same name were alive at the time of Jesus or in the first decades of the Church. The Scripture does not specify the man to whom the title of this epistle refers.
Was it James, who was called the “brother of the Lord”? (Gal 1:19). The oldest Christian tradition was that James was a son of Joseph by an earlier marriage. (Under Jewish law, sons or daughters of Joseph’s earlier marriage, if indeed there was an earlier marriage, would have been called the brothers or sisters of Jesus.)
This again is a tradition. It cannot be known for sure with the evidence now available. It may have been another James.
Bottom line: The reading this weekend is a great lesson in the destiny of all humans before God. Everything earthly will pass away. Only the spiritual will endure.
St. Mark’s Gospel provides the third reading. Jesus returned from visits to Tyre and Sidon, in what today is Lebanon, and to the Ten Cities, an area now in Jordan.
Merely by having visited these places, Jesus took the presence of God far and wide, to gentiles as well as to Jews.
Returning, Jesus encountered a man unable to hear or to speak. Bystanders and likely the man himself would have assumed that somebody’s sin, somehow, was at fault.
So, while Jesus healed the man physically, it was a sign of divine forgiveness. Union with God brings wholeness, strength and hope of peace now and everlasting life in heaven.
Reflection
The Church for weeks has called us to discipleship, warning us that we are shortsighted and weak.
Face facts. In these readings, the Church confronts us with our sins, the source of our weakness. Sin separates us from God, blinds us and leaves us deaf, leaving us helpless, in the dark. We are doomed.
When God forgives us, we are restored, refreshed and strengthened. We can see and hear. We can find our way.
It is that simple. Sin is our burden as humans, often with dire effects. No one is too bad to receive God’s healing, forgiveness and power. Just ask for forgiveness. God, in Christ, our sole hope, newer turns us away. †