Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Well, here we are, gathered together in one place. Someone once said that the church could be described as "Here comes everybody." Because we understand this assembly is for everyone.

We think in territorial terms, and we say that the people in a particular territory who are Catholic Christians come to this particular assembly or church, because they are members of this particular parish.

And we know that we are to find out who we really are when we come together for this assembly, for the Sunday Eucharist, on which we give thanks for the resurrection of Jesus on a Sunday.

But there are many questions that could be raised about our coming together here. And we hear some questions in the letter of James.

And it's good for us to remember that in the very early years of Christianity, people came together for the Eucharist, for the breaking of the bread, for the most part, in private homes. So we need to imagine this. And James suggests that you might pay a lot of attention to someone with gold rings and fine clothes, and give this person some kind of privilege.

Whereas there might be someone that you judge to be less important. And you say, "Well, there's room to stand over here, or you can sit at my feet." And James is pointing out that this is how we carry out discrimination among people, when we are to understand that we enjoy a radical equality, because we are the children of God, we are the ones redeemed by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We are equals. And we realize that as we come to this Eucharist, there is no one among us who has life figured out.

And the one great riddle for all of us is our mortality, the fact that we are subject to death. And we come here because the Son of God has addressed this riddle of death, and he has done so definitively by laying down his life and then rising from the dead and bringing all of us with him into resurrection.

Now we have to help one another. We think of the various liturgical ministers who volunteer to take on various roles in our celebration.

We think of lecturers and servers and Eucharistic ministers. It is important for us to know that the people you see carrying out these functions are on a very short rotation.

And we can easily have many, many more people assume these roles. And if we are not inclined to volunteer in this way, it is important for us to ask ourselves, "What are we afraid of?" Being seen?

Well, you find out when you let yourself be seen, you can relax. Again, we are not here to impress one another or engage in some sort of one upmanship.

We are all pilgrims on this great journey, and we learn to be at ease and at peace with one another. 

In the Gospel, we have related social concerns.

We take note of the fact that Jesus, in carrying out this healing of this man, takes him away from the crowd, gives him some privacy.

And when you think about the various things that Jesus does, which seem very, very crude to us, putting his fingers into the man's ears, spitting, touching his tongue, and groaning.

I think if we were receiving this service, we'd just as soon not have anyone see us. And we take special note of the groaning, because sometimes when it comes to prayer, yes, we have words for prayer.

But there are times when all we can do is groan. And St. Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit himself groans along with us.

It's strange, of course, that although Jesus told the people to keep this quiet, they announce it to the world. Jesus' point is that he only does healings when there is an expression of faith.

And people have faith in Jesus to do this. And when we have received some benefit, some great healing, it's not the first thing we do to tell everybody, we have to reflect on the meaning of this healing.

And among other things, we realize that if we're given the power to speak, we don't have to speak all the time. We also must take time for listening and listening to our Lord and what he wants us to do with our various powers.

So keep all this in mind as we give thanks for our various gifts. And remember that those gifts are for the sake of service.