The
Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
The
Christian Initiation of Luke Johnson
Dear brothers and sisters,
If we consider them together, the
readings from the Sacred Scriptures we have just heard each “speak of God as
the center of all reality and the center of our personal life.”[1] In a
certain sense, the deaf man whom Jesus healed symbolizes what happens when we
do not recognize God as the center, the hub around which the wheel of our life
turns: we become deaf to both God and neighbor.
If we consider what has happened over
these past few decades in our culture and society, we begin to realize
something a great importance:
There
is not only a physical deafness which largely cuts people off from social life;
there is also a “hardness of hearing” where God is concerned… Put simply, we
are no longer able to hear God – there are too many different frequencies
filling our ears… Along with this hardness of hearing or outright deafness
where God is concerned, we naturally lose the ability to speak with him and to
him. And so we end up losing a decisive capacity for perception. We risk losing
our inner senses… The horizon of our life is disturbingly foreshortened.[2]
But now and again something happens to lengthen
our vision and shake us back into reality.
This is precisely what happened with
the great Doctor of the Church, Saint Augustine of Hippo, who famously said to
God,
You
called me; you cried aloud to me; you broke my barrier of deafness. You shone
upon me; your radiance enveloped me; you put my blindness to flight. You shed
your fragrance about me; I drew breath and now I gasp for your sweet odour. I
tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am
inflamed with love of your peace.[3]
The Lord God shouted through
Augustine’s deafness, his inability to perceive the one who is merciful love
itself; his healing touch was proved irresistible. The same can happen to us;
God can reach out, touch us, and heal our deafness and inner senses when we
begin to inquire into the meaning of our existence.
The daughter of J.R.R. Tolkien’s
publisher wrote to the Professor with the question, “What is the purpose of
life?” Before answering her question, Tolkien rightly noted that “if you do not
believe in a personal God the question: ‘What is the purpose of life?’ is
unaskable and unattainable. To whom or what would you address the question?”[4] In the
end, Tolkien answered the question with typical insight: “So it may be said
that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to
our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by
it to praise and thanks.”[5]
We learn best, of course, through our senses and so we must continually ask the Lord Jesus to touch them and heal them, to make them ever more open to perceiving him. Accordingly, our knowledge of God must be both of the mind and of the heart; it is not enough to know about God; it must, rather, be a personal knowledge, a personal encounter, or else we cannot give him fitting thanks.
 |
| Detail, Jesus heals the deaf and mute man, Codex Palatinus Vindobonensis 485, f. 86 |
We have among us today one whose deafness the Lord Jesus shouted through and has recognized God to be the center of his personal life. Over these past many months, Luke, you have heard the Savior and Redeemer continually call to you in various ways, inviting you into a relationship with him. You have responded with curiosity and integrity and the horizon of your life has widened to perceive God more clearly. For this, we give thanks to God and ask him to reawaken this perception of his grace in each of our lives.
Now you have come to the Church
requesting the grace of Baptism. We know that
Baptism
opens up a path before us. It makes us part of the community of those who are
able to hear and speak; it brings us into fellowship with Jesus himself, who
alone has seen God and is thus able to speak of him (cf. John 1:18): through
faith, Jesus wants to share with us his seeing God, his hearing the Father and
his converse with him. The path upon which we set out at Baptism is meant to be
a process of increasing development, by which we grow in the life of communion
with God, and acquire a different way of looking at man and creation.[6]
In short, the path of Baptism obliges
us to do what Tolkien said, namely to increase our knowledge of God in every
way we can and so fall more deeply in love with him. It obliges us to
continually open our hearts to him who allowed his heart to be opened to us.
In various ways, Luke, the Lord Jesus
has touched you – as he soon will in the waters of Baptism - and said to you,
“Ephphatha,” “Be opened!” He says this not only of your ears, but also of your
eyes, mouth, hands, and heart. You must allow your ears to be opened to hear
the voice of God; your eyes to see his handiwork; your mouth to proclaim what
he has done for you; your hands to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit through
the Sacrament of Confirmation; and your heart to receive his love in the gift
of his very self in the Eucharist.
Through the witness of the example of
your faith, we who have already been incorporated into Christ must strengthen
our resolve to also be entirely open to God and so be inflamed with the love of
his peace. May he bring us, with you, to eternal life, the great promise of
Baptism into his Death and Resurrection. Amen.
[1]
Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, 10 September 2006.
[2]
Ibid.
[3]
Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, X.27. R.S. Pine-Coffin, trans.
(London: Penguin Books, 1961), 232.
[4]
J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 310 To Camilla Unwin, 29 May 1868. In The Letters of
J.R.R. Tolkien: Revised and Expanded Edition. Humphrey Carpenter, ed. (New
York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2023), 561.
[5]
Ibid., 562.
[6]
Pope Benedict XVI, Ibid.
