Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Isaiah 35:4-7; James 2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37)
A knowledge of Israel's geography will help us capture the
meaning of today's Gospel. The reading tells us that Jesus encounters the deaf
and mute man in the region of Decapolis. It is a place of Greek-Roman culture. So it
can be confidently said that the man is a pagan. As such, he cannot give thanks
and praise to God.
However, Jesus' actions free him from his impediments. By
putting His fingers in the man’s ears, Jesus opens them so that he may hear the
word of God. By touching his tongue with saliva, Jesus loosens it so that he
can give his testimony about Jesus. Both actions serve as a sign of baptism,
which makes us followers of Jesus, ready to proclaim Him as the long-awaited
Messiah. In fact, even today, the touching of the ears and mouth is included in
the rite of baptism.
We who are baptized are called to speak about Jesus in a
world that would abolish his name. The way the French mocked Jesus at the
Olympics indicated this unfortunate development. Although there are many righteous Muslims,
in countries with a Muslim majority, there is almost inevitably an effort to
either force the conversion of Christians or keep them subjugated. We can also
see the disregard for Christianity in authoritarian governments like those of
China and Russia, which seek to control the Church.
However, there are men and women who defend our faith. Last
year, a woman who was Muslim in her childhood and atheist in her youth
converted to Christianity. Now she proclaims Christianity as the best way to
confront forces that seek to strangle Christianity and dominate the human
person. Highly intelligent and articulate, Ms. Ayaan Hirsi Ali sees in Jesus
and the Church ways to confront the threats not only to Christianity but also
to freedom.
Mrs. Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia. Her family was Muslim,
but did not practice that faith. In 2002, Hirsi Ali condemned the attacks on
the Twin Towers the previous year and criticized Islam for its doctrine of
jihad against “infidels.” She then embraced atheism for its way of elevating
reason over human folly without any illusions of an afterlife. Atheism seemed to her more realistic and
beneficial to the world than any alternative. In time, however, she began to rethink
the matter. She saw faults in rationalism
and noted that Christianity had overcome threats as great as the overbearing
forces that want to dominate the world today: the authoritarianism and
expansionism of Russia and China, the fanaticism of Islam, and the ideology of
“woke” culture. She concluded that only the Judeo-Christian tradition has the
capacity to defend the common good.
Perhaps we are thinking: What does the struggle against world
dominating forces have to do with us here? I believe it has a lot to do with
us. Unless we listen to the word of God and speak of it to our children and
grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and friends, they will fall victim to these evil
forces. To protect them, we want them to know Jesus, who gave us the blueprint for
a just and strong society. Even more importantly, He sent us the Holy Spirit to
recognize evil and fight against it.
We do not want to be alarmists. On the contrary, we should
calmly and deliberately explain to anyone who will listen that Jesus is the
savior, as the first reading indicates. He has come as a justice-giver to the
faithful.
