Jimmy Akin

Sunday, September 9, is the Twenty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B). Mass Readings: Isaiah 35:4-7, Psalm 146:6-10, James 2:1-5, Mark 7:31-37

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In this Sunday’s Gospel, we read the story of a deaf man. Because he couldn’t hear properly, he also couldn’t properly calibrate the way he spoke, and so he had a speech impediment and was hard to understand. Anyone in his situation would find the two conditions painfully frustrating and embarrassing, and though most of us are blessed with good hearing and speech, we’ve all faced the awkwardness and frustration of not understanding others and of not being understood.

Fortunately, Jesus had compassion on the man and healed both his hearing and his speech impediment. This was one of the signs of the Christ, for Isaiah had prophesied that in the Messiah’s day, the deaf would hear and the mute would speak. Not only that, the blind would see and the lame would regain their ability to walk—miracles that Jesus also performed.

The fact Jesus did these miracles reveals his identity as the Messiah, the Savior that God had promised centuries beforehand. The miracles also reveal something else: God’s compassion for the disadvantaged. God knows the pain and frustration of all who are disadvantaged—whether they are blind, deaf, mute, lame, or anything else. This is why the Psalms say that God “secures justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets captives free.”

God’s compassion extends to everyone, no matter what disadvantages they face. Thus he “raises up those who were bowed down” and “protects strangers”—those travelling in foreign lands, who face hostility and have no support network to sustain them. In the ancient world, many men died young, leaving their children and wives alone, but “the fatherless and the widow the Lord sustains.”

Few things are certain in life, and we must not presume that we will always have the advantages that we do now. Because we won’t. One day we all will face hardship—whether it’s due to the death of a loved one, an illness, an accident, or a financial reversal. One day all of us will be disadvantaged in some way.

We must share God’s compassion for the disadvantaged, for one day all of us will need it ourselves. Among other things, this means that we must not show favoritism. St. James warns us against giving preferential treatment to the rich and well-advantaged. In the first century church, that might mean telling a rich, finely dressed man, “Sit here, please,” while telling a poor, shabbily dressed man, “Stand there,” or “Sit at my feet.”

By doing these things, we would set ourselves up as judges who look only at temporary, outward appearances—at fortunate or unfortunate circumstances that frequently are beyond the control of the person who experiences them. But God has compassion on everyone, regardless of their circumstances, and we need to show a corresponding, universal compassion on everyone.

After all, difficult days are coming our way. All of us will face hardship in the future. All of us will need to be shown compassion by others. And all of us will be grateful when we receive it. Let us show it to others today.

Sunday, September 2, is the Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B). Mass Readings: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8, Psalms 15:2-5, James 1:17-18, 21-22, 27, Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

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Sometimes we hear people running down the concept of religion. “Jesus didn’t come to bring us a religion,” they say, “but he wants to have a relationship with us.” Other times we hear people say they are “spiritual” but not “religious.” Both of these are based on an impoverished understanding of what religion is—as if it simply consisted of unimportant rituals or arbitrary doctrines.

But real religion involves neither of these. It doesn’t contain arbitrary doctrines but truths that have been revealed by God. It also involves genuine relationships with God, with Christ, and with our fellow human beings.

Thus St. James tells us that “religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” Having a real relationship with God means not only loving him but loving our neighbors as well—especially our less fortunate neighbors.

Yet it is possible to become too focused on external rituals. This happened with Jesus’ critics, who faulted his disciples for not washing their hands before they ate, in violation of the custom of their day. But this custom was not based on God’s teaching. It isn’t found in the Mosaic Law. Jesus thus rebuked his critics for “teaching as doctrines human precepts.”

Like the prophets before him, Jesus made it clear that moral values take precedence over mere ritual observances: “From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.”

This is not to say that rituals are unimportant. Ritual appears in every culture, showing that it’s built into human nature. Thus God gave Israel rituals alongside moral commandments in the Old Testament Law. This Law was a model of wisdom for the people of the ancient near east, and by observing it the Israelites would show “wisdom and intelligence to the nations,
who will hear of all these statutes and say, ‘This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people.’”

God has ordained different rituals for us today, but ritual—together with the moral imperatives that flow from the ethic of love—is an important part of how we relate to God.

Rather than talking down religion, we should recognize and embrace the concept, for it is a biblical one. In doing so, we should embrace the impulse for ritual that God built into human nature, but we should also recognize the transcendent importance of love. This is taught in both the Old and the New Testaments. When Jesus identified the first and second great commandments as love of God and love of neighbor, he was quoting from the Law of Moses.

We thus should “be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.” And we always should strive to be one who “walks blamelessly and does justice; who thinks the truth in his heart,” for “whoever does these things shall never be disturbed.”