TWENTITHIRD SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – B (Isaiah 35:4-7a; James 2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37) Theme: We are invited to set right everything, our life and the life of others Reflection: We are the means of communication of God’s life to others - Today Jesus is calling each of his followers to work for the good and to set right everything that goes wrong. In other words, He is inviting us to create everything anew. What is old and the damaged has to be either repaired or replaced by the new and the good. The readings of today encourage us towards this task of restoration and renewal of personal life and also the life of those who enter into our sphere. We are always in connection to what we have already reflected on the last Sunday. Last week we have meditated upon the theme that we have to carry Jesus in our hearts by the coherence and integration between the word we speak and the deed we accomplish. Today we step little further and note that when Jesus is there with us and within us we are reformed and renewed. Only then we can once again repeat the words of St. Paul: “It is not I who live but the Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). - The presence of Jesus makes us new beings and transformed creatures. Our fearful and trembling past is smashed away and the joyous and enthusiastic future is offered to us by the power of his presence. Jesus who enters into us is not silent and indifferent. He does something inside. He cuts open the heart to clean it and to enhance it. He makes it his own. But for every action he will to fulfil in us he seeks for our acceptance and our readiness to respond to him. He does not impose his will but seeks for our free cooperation. When he speaks he expects our attentive ears. When he acts he expects our attentive eyes. When he calls us he expects our attentive heart. In brief he does not do anything without our attentive response and collaboration. Therefore, he invites us to share in his life and to spread it through the testimony of life. And in this way we can become the restorers of our own life first and the life of those who are discouraged and desperate. - The church is asking us to fill ourselves with this mission of restoring and rebuilding the Christian faith and vocation. She proposes the readings that empower us with the lot of message. She enables us to note the capacity that we have and we are given: we are capable of renovating everything as Jesus has restored the life of the deaf and dumb as we encounter it in the gospel. We are saved and the possibility of salvation is given to us, Christians. We need to recognize and realize what we are called for: we have to count on the spiritual energy that we have so that we re-create and make well all that is not alright. To put in one word: we are called to communicate the true life to those around us. We can communicate it to others only because we have this life in us as the fruit of our saviour. In fact, he has come to give us life and to give it in abundance (John 10:10). What we need for the communication is the language either of the words or of the gestures. Jesus does the same in today’s gospel. He communicates what he has to the deaf and dumb. He makes him to hear and he makes him to speak. He opens to him the space to communicate. Through the communication it is possible to renew everything. In this way, we may also call this Sunday as the Sunday of communication. - Our Christian life is full of these elements of communication: we use both words (formulas) and the symbols (gestures) in the Christian liturgy. These are the means of communicating the life of Jesus to the faithful. We have the language of the sacraments. “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” are the words used and oils are the symbols utilized in the rite of Baptism for inviting the believer into new life. “This is my Body given up for us” and “this is the cup of my Blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins” are the words used and the bread and wine are the symbols utilized in the Eucharist for nourishing the faithful for the spiritual growth. In the similar manner all the sacraments and the liturgical rituals contain the methods of communicating the life of Jesus to the followers. - Right use of the means is very important. Even in the world we have methods of communication. In particular, with the development of scientific and technological sphere the means are reached to the peak state. The modern man is rightly called a man of computer or a mobile computer. With the internet the communication has taken its super rapid speed. But we can stop ourselves here to ask only one question: where does this development is heading to? And how far the communication is helpful for the building up of man and society? What is required is not only the growth of the communication methods and skills but “the right and meaningful use” of them for making the man renewed and the world renovated with peace, solidarity and love. Through the reading of today and especially through the miracle is worked in the gospel, Jesus is inviting to make use of Christian vocation to build up the just and right society because we are called to set right everything. Summary of the readings: Jesus has come to make everything anew - Word of Hope (first reading): God sends the prophet Isaiah to his people with the message of hope and the proclamation of the day of salvation. God listens to the cry of his people who are in the Babylonian slavery. He does not abandon his people. He heeds their prayers. He sends them the messenger to communicate to them the coming of the new joy and new life. Proclamation of hope is very clear: “take heart, do not fear! Here is your God… comes to save you” (v. 4). This message fills his people with courage and hope. Their God comes to restore and renew the life of his people. The current of the waters in the desert (v.6-7) signify that when God comes to his people, there will be again the greenery of joy and the fountain of life. Again here the symbol of water communicates the truth of life. The desert will become the good pasture. The discouraged life will become the spirit-filled life. The life of slavery will turn into the life of freedom. The people of foreign land will become the children of Promised Land. This takes place in the coming of Jesus into the world. The waters of river Jordan is the symbol of conversion and new life. The water that flowed from the side of Crucified Jesus along with the blood is the symbol of sanctification and new creation. The promise of the prophecy is fulfilled in Jesus who has poured out his life for the salvation of all. In this way, Jesus has restored and renewed the man who has fallen into sin and ruined his life. - Salvation for all without preferences (second reading): St. James is little radical in his proclamation. He highlights that the differences and discriminations are the creation of man and not of God. God has no preferences and no differences (Acts 10:34; Rom 2:11; Gal 2:6; Eph 6:9). For him all are same and he has made all of us one in Jesus Christ (Gal 3:28; Rom 10:12; 1Cor 12:13; Col 3:11). He is the Lord of all. He offers divine life to all. All are equally his children. Man, instead, with his mean, selfish and arrogant attitude create the barriers and thus breaks the wall of justice, equality and peace. But the creation of God and the salvation of Jesus proclaim the message of totality and equality. God has created man in his image and likeness. Therefore, every human being carries in him this image and thus all men have only one thing in common, that is, the image of God. Insofar man has this he is child of God and insofar he is child of God all other human beings become to him brothers and sisters. - All other differences, personal or social, are only the secondary level and the imagination and ignorant creation of man. The rich may one day become poor or a poor may one day become rich. The luxurious man may become street boy or street boy may one day become luxurious. The ignorant may become intelligent and the intelligent may one day finds himself out of mind. The state and the status of each man may change according to the conditions and possibilities. But one thing remains common and permanent in every man: the image of God in him. That is what has to be counted with the human relationships and only than there will be new creation of society and restoration of peace and equality. - In fact, Jesus has come for this and has accomplished this. From the first instance of his life he has offered his life for all and not just for one small group of his kith and kin. Often he visited the pagan villages and has worked more miracles in their presence than in his own home town and among his own people. He has come for all and he died for all. His extended hands on the cross show that with this death on the cross he has “embraced all to himself” and has attracted to himself all (John 12:32). He has proclaimed the kingdom of peace and justice and invited all to it: rich and poor alike, Jews and pagans alike, and those own and those who are others. We keep aside all the differences and discriminations when we come to the table of the Lord: we are filled with the same word and nourished with the same bread and thus we become one people. We become, thus, renewed people and restored nation for the Lord. - He sets right everything (gospel): in the gospel we may observe two attitudes from the part of Jesus in performing the miracle and two attitudes from the part of the people in responding to the miracle. o To bring and to proclaim – the two attitudes of the people: The deaf and dumb has not come to Jesus by himself but the people have brought him to Jesus. They carried him to Jesus and prayed that he might do something. This is the first attitude of the people: they have faith in the power of Jesus and have led the disabled man to him. And then, when Jesus has accomplished the miracle and has made them to speak and to listen, the people have acknowledged the marvellous opera of Jesus. They could not control their joy (v.36). They could not stop their great surprise. They started glorifying God for the good deed he has done. This is the second attitude of the people: they proclaim and praise with the joy that he has done everything new (v.37). o Gestures of creation and the working of miracle – the two modes of performing the miracle: Jesus, by healing the deaf and dumb, manifests that he has come to make everything new and to restore everything to the original state. To reveal this truth he does the miracle but does it by using some gestures of creation. He uses four gestures as we note in the gospel: taking him apart and touching him with his hands (v.33) and looking into heaven and breathing into him (v.34). These gestures take us back to the remembrance of the first creation in the genesis. Jesus has descended from heaven to bring about new creation on earth and to indicate this he adapts the similar gestures of the creation account. This is the first attitude of Jesus in working the miracle. There is yet another attitude: not just by the word but by the action. When the people have brought the deaf and dumb to him, he has not preferred to speak but to act. He has not opted for the words but for the deed. The deed speaks more than the word. “Be open” is the word that Jesus uses but uses it at the end and after completing the action. He could have very well said as in the many other instances with word: your faith has saved you… be healed… and so on. But here, in this particular miracle, Jesus manifests an act of new creation and thus he gives preference to doing more than to speaking. - These two attitudes of Jesus in healing the deaf and dumb man reveal to us that he has come to restore what is damaged, to renew what is outdated, and to seek and to save what is lost. He brings the man into the original status of fullness: now he listens and now he talks. He is a complete image of God and thus he is a new creation. Jesus thus has communicated his fullness of life to this particular deaf and dumb and to us all through the means of the word (proclaimed) and the sacraments (performed). Our task: To set right our life and the life of others - We are called to set right our life first: we have to acknowledge the miraculous action of Jesus in our life. He has saved us. He has sanctified us. He has called us to himself. He has communicated his life to us. We are made new creation. We are new beings in the Lord. St. Paul proclaims it with the great voice: in him we have become new creation (2 Cor 5:17). But often we become spiritually deaf and dumb. Often we fall into temptation of talking more of other things than the marvellous deeds of the Lord. Often we tend to listen more of worldly things than the word of the God’s love. We give more attention to the listening and speaking of what we like and what is passing away. We do not make right use of our senses. With false usage of our organs of the body we become spiritually and even personally disable. We do something become we ourselves fail to understand what we do. And as the world changes or rapidly grows into science and technology the situation become still worse. - Immersed in the senses and sounds of the worldly pleasure we become an illusion. Our life becomes just a Maya. We pretend to be good and well whereas we hide our true nature and condition. That’s why we become physically sick, mentally inactive and spiritually inattentive. We really need a cure. We really need a care. We really need a healing. At this juncture, Jesus is calling us today to just wait and see where we are and what we are. He is inviting us to seek his aid so that we receive his healing. One thing is sure and we all know well: we cannot overcome this difficulty and incapacity by ourselves. We need someone divine and powerful: someone who can set right everything in our life. That someone we have is Jesus himself. We have to seek his presence. We have to carry all our burdens and fears to him with the faith that he can do something. We need to ardently pray so that he takes us apart (to be with him alone), he touches (to have his personal experience), he makes us look high in hope (heaven pours down the grace) and finally he breaths into us (breath of God is the spirit of life). We are set right. We are healed. We are made anew. And we become new creation. - Holy Mass is the fountain of Christian life: the celebration of the Eucharist to which we come every time is the moment of salvation. It is not just an external ritual but it is a marvellous saving act of Jesus which touches our internal life. Even here, there is a word that is proclaimed. God opens us his own and demands an attentive attitude to it. We have to embrace the word into the heart. More than that, there is a deed that is performed: the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. It is a great act because Jesus donates himself to us. Not just his word but whole person of Jesus enters into us in the form of communion. We have to receive him with a gesture of love. The listening of the word leads us to the performing of an act. The words are important but more than that we have to give ourselves. This is the mission we are asked to do from now on: to proclaim his message of salvation which we have already received with the testimony of life. - We have to set right the life of others: the consequence of the proclamation is that we fulfil the task of calling or carrying others to Jesus so that they too will have the restoration of their life and they too become the new creature. The people around are discouraged as the people of the first reading: they are disparate because they are missing the way, missing the truth, and missing even the life. They are worried and taken away by the blows of the world’s temptations. They do not see anything good. They do not listen anything good. They do not speak anything good. They do not do anything good. In this pathetic situation they find themselves out of place and without hope. They remain there with heart broken and with the life torn. - Who have to proclaim to them the message of hope? It is we. We have to take the place of the prophet Isaiah. Who have to announce to them the truth that they are saved without any differences? It is we. We have to take the place of Apostle James. Who have to carry them to Jesus so that he could heal them? Again it is we. We have to slowly invite them to Jesus. If needed we have to extend our hand to take them to hand and guide them to Jesus. We know the he is the way, the truth and the life. They too have to acknowledge this. It is possible only when they come into contact with him. We have to be the meeting point between Jesus and others. Let us be like the people of the gospel who have carried the deaf and dumb to Jesus. - This is the task we are given today: we set right ourselves first with the participation in the mysteries of Jesus and we set right the life of others when we lead them to Jesus. We can only fruitfully and successfully lead them when we testify our life: testimony needs more of deeds than words.