Be Opened!

Be Opened!

September 9, 2012

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time 2012 B

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ

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.  Isaiah 35:4b-7a

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?  James 2:5

[T]hen 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.  Mark 7:34-36

Piety

Our piety says to the Lord.  Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.  False piety is the make believe of the Spiritual life.  True piety is seen in the clarity of the reflection of Christ made by the way we live our lives.  The Lord is love forever.  Every moment of life in its newness is the fullness of the love of the Lord.  How we make the ordinary come alive with the extraordinary of belonging to the Lord happens through our ability to hear what the Lord is asking of us.  All of life is speaking the love of God for us.  Our spiritual deafness makes it difficult to hear what the Lord is asking.  It is for this that we ask the Lord by our piety to hear better what the Lord is always telling us.  Life is the wonderful gift of God’s love.  How we appreciate life and respond to it is the truth of our piety.  Discernment is the gift of being able to see beyond appearances and to listen to the babbling of the brooks as the song of the Lord’s love for us.  The ways the ocean of God’s love crashes around us with the waves of how much God loves is the beginning of the hearing the voice of what the Lord has created us for.  We are called to be the sound of his music in the way we live our piety.  Our piety makes pools out of burning sands and springs of water out of thirsty ground.  Our piety can open the eyes of the blind to God’s love.

Study

We study how Christ did things to learn the best way of sharing the love of God.  Christ is the good news of the Father’s love for us.  We bring to Christ our problems even as the deaf man with the speech impediment was brought to Christ.  The miracles of the Lord are each moment of life when we are able to cope with who we are before the infinite majesty of God.  Our nothingness has something extraordinary made of it when we offer our weaknesses to the Lord.  It is in our weaknesses that the strength of the Lord is seen.  We are touched by the Lord in our weaknesses with which the Lord identifies.  We bring the Lord our weaknesses so that his love can be seen anew.  We study how to speak in his name.  We ask the Lord to use us to make a better world.

Action

We show no partiality when we treat the least persons of our lives the same way we would treat our brothers and sisters.  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.  Our actions praise the Lord when we secure justice for the oppressed.  We join the work of God in giving food to the hungry.  We do our part to set free those captive to drugs and oppression.  There is no stranger that we do not try to reach out to if we are not going to make distinctions among ourselves and judge with evil designs.  We treat every person who comes our way in their needs as brothers and sisters of the Lord.  We give to the needy a voice to be heard by as we take care of their needs and let the needs of the poor be the voice of the call of the Lord for help.