September 11, 2024
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B) on September 8, 2024, at Old St. Mary’ Catholic Church in Chicago, IL. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Isaiah 35:4-7a; Psalm 146; James 2:1-5; and Mark 7:31-37.
Today is our second of five Sundays with the Letter of James. James is perhaps the closest equivalent in the New Testament to the wisdom literature in the Old Testament. Old Testament wisdom literature gives prudent advice about how Jewish people are to live lives of virtue. While these books are filled with profound ideas, some of them are difficult to read straight through because they lack any story. Together, they cover 187 pages in my Bible. James, however, feels remarkably relevant to contemporary life, perhaps because it was written to a community with more cultural diversity. And it’s only three pages long, so take a few minutes to read it some time! James challenges us to consider how deeply our Christian faith has permeated our daily actions.
Our gospel passage is about Jesus’ cure of a person who is deaf and mute. This is seen as a fulfillment of God’s promises in our first reading from Isaiah. How are we each called to be more open to incorporating the gospel into our lives? Let us ask God for grace and mercy.
Lord Jesus, you are our way, our truth, and our life. Lord have mercy.
Christ Jesus, you are our light, our feast, and our strength. Christ, have mercy.
Lord Jesus, you are our joy, our love, and our heart. Lord, have mercy.
The Old Testament prophets railed against the aristocrats of ancient Israel: the test of whether one follows God, they said, is how one treats orphans, widows, and aliens. And the prophets said that if the aristocrats did not change their ways, their way of life would be destroyed. And it came to pass.
James challenges us in a similar way today: do we treat rich people and poor people alike? Most of us instinctively answer why yes, we treat everyone in the same way. But do we really?
Ephphetha! Open our eyes and our ears, Lord, before it is too late!
I’ve never lived through a famine, but I lived through the 2021 electric power crisis in Texas, when the grocery store shelves were bare for a week and internal home temperatures dropped below 40 degrees. The Austin Paulists were privileged enough to have a well-stocked pantry and to live on an electric circuit that the government considered to be “essential.” But it was a scary week for millions of our neighbors, and despite efforts to care for one another, hundreds of people died.
Except for the occasional week every decade or so when locusts fall out of the sky, I haven’t lived through a Biblical plague. But in recent decades, an alarming number of diseases have jumped from animals to humans: AIDS. SARS. MERS. Swine flu. Bird flu. Dengue. Ebola. Zika. Covid-19. Mpox. What is our collective responsibility for these crises as we keep expanding development into the wilderness?
The threat of violent conflict may be increasing in our nation. I especially worry that politicians, especially in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, have not implemented common-sense measures to reduce the potential claims of conspiracy theorists this November.
We haven’t experienced a flood of 40 days and 40 nights, but epic weather events are now commonplace. Three years ago, a single storm, Hurricane Ida, killed 91 people in the United States across 9 different states!
40% of American families do not have the funds to stay in a cheap hotel for a week if they faced an emergency. We constantly debate reducing benefits for the poor, but many of us here today think nothing of the much larger benefits we derive from reduced taxes on capital gains and mortgage payments.
Pope Francis was prescient when he wrote his encyclical on the environment nine years ago. He said, “We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature” (#139).
Can we comfortably bear the title of “Christian” when we decide who among us is worthy to be protected from famine, disease, violence, financial instability, and severe weather, and who is not? James would say we’re on the brink of becoming “judges with evil designs.”
The fact of the matter is, most of us at Old St. Mary’s are protected from the worst of many crises facing people in other parts of the world and in other neighborhoods of Chicago. It’s easy for us to think that all we have to do is to give a few cans of food to the food bank, get vaccinated, stop posting inflammatory messages on social media, donate to Catholic Charities, and wash our clothes in cold water. God is calling us to a much more radical, much more sacrificial love.
It’s so easy to close our eyes to how we benefit from the status quo at the expense of others. But we must prioritize protecting the poor of today and the children of tomorrow.
Isaiah exhorted the frightened people to not fear but to have faith that God would save them. “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf be cleared.” Perhaps, right now, God is in the very midst of saving us by opening our eyes and ears to the devastation caused by our negligence, while there is still a chance to avoid the worst. Perhaps the Holy Spirit is inviting us to open our children’s eyes and ears, rather than thinking the best approach is to cocoon them in a life of privilege. And maybe it is through our efforts — and through the efforts of our children — that “the burning sands will become pools, and the thirsty ground, springs of water.”
Ephphetha! Open our eyes and our ears, Lord, before it is too late!