Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

“Be strong, fear not!” These are opening words of with which God spoke to us today in the readings. And the people of Israel, to whom these words were originally addressed, knew the meaning of fear. They had lived as slaves for four hundred years. Purely on the strength of his presence God had brought them out of slavery and fear into freedom and security. Yet five hundred years later, the same people abandoned God out of fear of their more powerful enemy nations. God did not abandon them, but they abandoned God by making pacts with foreign nations instead of trusting in the presence and in the power of the same God who had rescued them from the Egyptians. Through the prophet Isaiah, God tells them, “Fear not! Be strong!” I guess God was telling them, “You have nothing to fear but fear itself.” The story of their destruction at the hand of the Babylonians in 587 BC is the story of the people of Israel giving into fear. The deaf man in today’s gospel reading begged Jesus to “lay his hands on him.” Jesus took the man aside and Mark tells us that Jesus groaned and said “Ephphatha!” Mark emphasizes both the begging of the blind man and the groaning of the God in our midst. The begging (try to picture the fact that he cannot talk or hear; he is acting out the begging – perhaps in tears of helplessness), tells us about the deaf man’s fear and desperation. Jesus’ groaning, on the other hand, brings out how deeply Jesus felt the pain, the fears of this man. We do not know all the details of Jesus’ gestures during the healing but I think this was the moment that God in Jesus had the deaf and mute man in his embrace. And the man was healed. Getting lost in God’s embrace is the key to healing from our fears.

How can we get lost in God’s embrace? Our closest and most personal encounter with God is the Eucharist. If we can muster the belief of the deaf and mute man, if we can bring our fears like he did, then the Eucharist is the moment when Jesus lays his hands on us and holds us in his embrace. The Eucharist is the greatest sacrament of healing.

Secondly, our moments of daily prayer are also very important. If we can make the time each day and be in God’s presence; if we can find quite time to merely feel God’s hands over us; if we can just loose ourselves in his embrace just for a moment – our lives will know the peace that passes all understanding. The best way to live a life that is not dominated by fear, is to make the Eucharist and our personal prayer an uncompromisable part of our daily lives.

- Fr. Satish Joseph