"God remains at work completing creation"

Below is a short section from the third chapter, which is the "architectontic"chapter of my dissertation, entitled "Kenosis is the essence of diakonia." The section title is the title of this post, except for the phrase that appears after "creation" "-even on the sabbath." This section utilizes an essay by James Alison.

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Commenting on the episode found in the fifth chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus’s Sabbath healing of a lame man, James Alison provides a glimpse of how God works through Christ to bring creation to completion.¹ One of the arguments made against Jesus’s healing being of divine origin is that it is performed on a Sabbath. The disputation begins with Jesus telling the man, after healing him, to pick up the mat on which he was laying and walk. It is the man’s walking with the mat in violation of the strict rules for Sabbath observance that first draws attention.

At the end of the first creation narrative, Genesis clearly states that after completing his work creating, God “rested on the seventh day from all the work he had undertaken.”² Further, we learn that “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work he had done in creation.”³ As a result, keeping the Sabbath day holy is encoded in the Decalogue.⁴ Alison observes with no disputation whatsoever the commandment to rest on the Sabbath “is a strict injunction to imitate God.”⁵ This commandment is taken so seriously by the observant men who accuse Jesus that anyone who does not observe it disobeys God by failing to imitate him.⁶ Jesus’s retort to the accusation that it is sinful to heal on the Sabbath is mind-blowing: “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.”⁷ According to Alison, Jesus’s reply contains two astonishing assertions: Jesus’s denial that God is resting on the Sabbath and, implied by this denial, stretching back to Genesis, the reason God is not resting on the Sabbath is because creation is not yet complete.⁸

Alison’s two assertions find further grounding in the fourth chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews, in which the earthly pilgrimage of God’s people ends with their entering into Sabbath rest. Citing Psalm 95, the author of Hebrews notes that entering into Sabbath rest was denied to the children of Israel because of their disobedience.⁹ In addition to resonating with this section of Hebrews, Alison’s insight also provides it with a hermeneutical key that lends the overarching point the inspired author is trying to make some theological coherence. “The cure on a Sabbath,” Alison continues, “has as its purpose to show God’s continued creative power mediated by Jesus.”¹⁰ Jesus’s point in this dispute, according to Alison, is that God is not done creating and so there is not yet a Sabbath rest into which anyone can enter.

Christ Healing the Sick at the Pool of Bethesda, by Carl Heinrich Bloch, 1883

What this dispute over Jesus’s healing of the lame man on a Sabbath amounts to is nothing less than who God is. If Sabbath observance in obedience to and imitation of God is what serves to separate the righteous from the sinners, then “God is defined,” and so circumscribed, by the Law. This view is what Jesus takes most exception to in his disputations with his fellow Jews, namely the Law as an end in itself as opposed to the means to the end of loving God and neighbor. Looked at through the lens of Jesus’s Sabbath healing, including his response to the accusation of being a transgressor, the Sabbath stands as a symbol of creation not yet finished, “and is an opportunity for God to reveal his lovingkindness [hesed] to humans,” thus “God is identified by his exuberant creativity.”¹¹

Being a rebirth, what can baptism be but God’s on-going work of bringing creation to its completion? In baptism as with Creation, God breathes his Spirit over the waters and brings forth life. There can be little doubt that something like this is what prompts Paul to proclaim: “whoever is in Christ is a new creation.”¹²

That Jesus’s work of creating is kenotic is hinted at in Luke’s account of his healing of the woman with hemorrhages.¹³ She is healed by touching a tassel on Jesus’s cloak. Even in the crowd, Jesus perceives that someone had touched him. When he asked his disciples who it was who touched him, beyond denying that it was one of them, they were flummoxed. Persisting, Jesus declared, “Someone has touched me; for I know that power has gone out from me.”¹⁴

It is the inspired author of Hebrews who states that “whoever enters into God’s rest, rests from his own works as God did from his.”¹⁵ As Jesus indicated in his dispute over healing on the Sabbath, God is not yet enjoying Sabbath rest because his work of creation is not yet complete. Diakonia is our participation in God’s on-going work of creation. “Therefore,” we are exhorted with reference to the generation of Israel that was delivered from Egypt, whose disobedience prevented them from entering the Promised Land, “let us strive to enter into that rest, so that no one may fall after the same example of disobedience.”¹⁶

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1 See John 5:1-18.^↩
2 See Genesis 2:3.^↩
3 See Genesis 2:4.^↩
4 See Exodus 20:8-11 and Deuteronomy 5:12-15.^↩
5 James Alison, Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay, 9.^↩
6 Faith Beyond Resentment, 9.^↩
7 John 5:17.^↩
8 Faith Beyond Resentment, 9.^↩
9 Hebrews 4:1-11.^↩
10 Faith Beyond Resentment, 10.^↩
11 Ibid.^↩
12 2 Corinthians 5:17.^↩
13 See Luke 8:40-48.^↩
14 Luke 8:46.^↩
15 Hebrews 4:10.^↩
16 Hebrews 4:11.^↩

Who are you for?

Readings: Num 11:25-29; Ps 19:8.10.12-14; James 5:1-6; Mark 9:38-43.45.47-48

Perhaps the best summary of today's readings is orthopraxis is more important than orthodoxy. For those who might be scratching their heads thinking, "Ortho.. what?", orthodoxy refers to believing and professing the right things. In terms of Christianity, it is professing correct doctrine. Orthopraxis, by contrast, refers to doing the right thing.

Having spent many years of my adult life studying theology, I'd be one of the last to assert that doctrine doesn't matter. But Christian doctrine is a communication, a conversation, one illumined by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Doctrine is regulative, not prescriptive. This is something for another time.

Ideally, orthodoxy should lead to orthopraxis. In reality, it very often doesn't. You see, those people who get hung up orthodoxy generally tend to do so at the expense of orthopraxy. At root, this was the issue between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees. Orthodoxy, when understood properly, is but a means to the end of orthopraxis. Put in the form of a question, What is the purpose of believing the correct things if it doesn't prompt you to do the right things?

It's interesting that in Mark's Gospel Jesus asserts that "whoever is not against us is for us" (Mark 9:40). Matthew's Gospel has Jesus saying, "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters" (Matthew 12:30). It's an interesting contrast but I am not going to explore it here. Suffice it to say, Jesus's insistence in today's Gospel that whoever is not against him is for him is (dare I say?) a more liberal attitude.

Many non-Christians, even many people who are agnostics and atheists, perform good works, engage in what we as Catholics classify as the Corporal Works of Mercy. Jesus assures us (and them, whether they care or not) that their reward for so doing will not be lost.

The essence of prophecy is not to magically predict the future. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, prophets call(ed) God's People back to fidelity with their covenant. Whether in the Old Testament or, as our epistle reading from James amply demonstrates, in the New Testament, this amounts to helping those in need, looking out for the least among us, loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.

The passage in our Gospel today about cutting off or plucking out parts of the body prone to sinning is an example of hyperbole. Jesus is not urging his followers to engage in self-destructive, maiming or crippling, behavior. Rather, he is trying to dramatically highlight the importance of following God's way of compassion and self-sacrificing service, the way of love of neighbor.

Ghenna is a valley or ravine to the west and southwest of Jerusalem. It was in Ghenna that some of Judah's kings sacrificed their children with fire (see Jeremiah 7:31 & 19:2-6- "Ben-hinnom" is Ghenna).

One does not need to posit an eternal hell of cartoon proportions. Rather, to live in accord with what the law of God commands (loving our neighbor- the one in need of our help) is to make God's Kingdom a present reality. Failure or refusal to live this way is to create and perpetuate a kind of hell, which we can see virtually every night on the evening news.

Who are you for? What are you about?

Before anyone gets discouraged, thinking "Well, what's the point of the whole Christian thing? Why belong to a church, participate in worship, study the faith, etc.?", it is important to point out that knowing Jesus is about so much more than just a mandate, even when that mandate is to act compassionately towards others. It stands to reason that one need not be a Christian to demonstrate compassion through works of mercy.

Anyone who has truly encountered the Risen Lord can tell you why it matters. Better yet, s/he exhibits how knowing Jesus makes a difference to the whole of life. While, in my experience, there are plenty of advantages, for lack of a better term, that flow from knowing Jesus, it isn't about or even mainly about what I get out of this relationship.

Moving hermitage

Since last Friday, I have been on the go. Last week, I drove with a brother deacon from Salt Lake-to-Cedar City-to-Saint George-to-Cedar City-to-Salt Lake. This past Monday I drove from my home to Cortez, Colorado. On Tuesday I drove from Cortez, Colorado to Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery in Pecos, New Mexico (east of Santa Fe, in the Sangre de Cristo mountains). I spent Tuesday evening, all day Wednesday, and Thursday morning with my fellow directors of the diaconate from USCCB Region XIII, which includes the states of Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.

We had a nice time praying together, getting better acquainted with one another, sharing our successes and challenges, listening to each other, and discerning matters that we need to make common cause on moving forward. Quite reluctantly, I was selected for a three-year term as president. While I am not the most recently ordained, I am the youngest, both chronologically and in terms of serving as deacon director. It's a great group of ministers, very dedicated to the Church, fervently serving their bishops by serving their fellow deacons and their wives, thus equipping those deacons for their threefold diakonia of liturgy, the word, and charity.

The only photo I took while in Pecos this week

Yesterday, I drove from Pecos back to Cortez, where I am composing this. When I am done, it's back in my Honda CRV and back on the road. I should be home for supper. I also think that's enough road trips for awhile! I've been in a kind of moving hermitage this week.

I didn't take a lot of photos or anything while I was at the monastery. I've needed the quiet of this week. I've needed it for a long time. While there, I began re-reading the late Fr. Charles Cummings, OCSO, Monastic Practices. Having been largely shaped by Benedictines, I find this reading fruitful. I knew Fr. Charles, who was a monk at Utah's Our Lady of the Holy Trinity Abbey in Huntsville, Utah, for most of his monastic life.

Fr. Cummings writes so beautifully and accurately about the necessity of liturgical prayer:

The power of the liturgy to transform and to lead us to God depends on our ability to immerse ourselves by grace in the mystery of Christ that is the objective content of the liturgy (22)

I drive home today from Cortez. Because this week reminded me how important it is for me to retreat more regularly than I do, it was difficult to leave. I remember what my first spiritual director, a Maronite priest who later became a hermit, used to tell me when I found it difficult to leave: "Make your goodbyes short." It was a nice way of saying, "Don't cling. Take what you received here back and live your vocation."

Our traditio for this final Friday of September is the monks of Ampleforth Abbey in Yorkshire, England chanting the Benedictus, canticle sung by Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist in Luke 1:68-79. This Canticle is sung/recited towards the end of Morning Prayer, traditionally known as Lauds:

The Christian word for service is "diakonia"

Readings: Wis 2:12.17-20; Ps 54:3-6.8; James 3:16-4:3; Mark 9:30-37

"Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every foul practice" (James 3:16). Too often jealousy and selfish ambition exist among Christians and in the Church. Jesus shows us a better way. The better way is not the easiest way. It is perhaps the path of maximum resistance. Jesus's way is the way of service, putting others before yourself. This is the simple and straightforward message of our readings for this Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

What is the one who is last of all called? Such a person is called diakonos, that is a deacon. Diakonia is an essential ingredient in the recipe of Christian discipleship. We come to Mass. Mass is derived from the Latin word meaning not merely to be dismissed but to be sent. What are we sent to do? We are sent to serve others in Jesus's name, which is how we make God's Kingdom a present reality. Worship that does not lead to service is not Christian, no matter how awe-inspiring it is.

Our Gospel reading begins with Jesus, once again, as in last week's Gospel, predicting his passion. It is precisely in his passion and death that Jesus demonstrates what it means to put others before one's self. Christ's crucifixion, no matter what your soteriology, is the ultimate act of service. One of my favorite hymns is Lord Whose Love In Humble Service begins with these words:

Lord, whose love in humble service

Bore the weight of human need,

Who upon the cross, forsaken,

Offered mercy’s perfect deed

As the late Fr. Herbert McCabe, OP, insisted: "if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you.”

Children in Jesus's culture were the least of the least. So, by insisting on the need to welcome them in his name, he teaches his followers what it means to be the servant all. Serving all means not only to serve the least but to particularly serve the least. It's important to serve those who cannot repay you, who cannot do anything for you. This is diakonia!

Just as there is the priesthood of the baptized, there is a diaconate of the baptized. As Israel's prophets noted over and over in different ways, worship requires service.

When Jesus spoke of dying and rising, his disciples didn't understand. They couldn't grasp what he was saying. Therefore, his excursus on selfless service, on diakonia, which is the Christian word for service, was his way of making his dying and rising both comprehensible and meaningful.

Christianity is sacramental because it is incarnational. This means Christianity is essentially concrete, not abstract, something we often forget. By marrying up Mark's Gospel with James's letter, the lectionary brings this into bold relief.

"I've got twice the memories weighing down my heart"

At least where I live, September means longer nights, cooler temperatures, and still plenty of sunshine. Without a doubt, the next sixty days or so are my favorite time of the year. Today finds me in Southern Utah. I am currently in Cedar City, where I am spending the night. I have an appointment later today down the road in Saint George. It's back home tomorrow.

On Monday, I leave for a trip to Northern New Mexico. So, a lot of miles over the next week. It's good to getaway. I need it. While I have a companion on this trip, my drive to New Mexico and back will be by myself. I plan to stop in Cortez, Colorado on my way and on my way home. Both trips are in my capacity as Director of the Office of the Diaconate for the Diocese of Salt Lake City.

Anyway, that's what I am up to. In the wake of seeing Colin Hay live a few weeks back, I purchased two of his albums: 2017's Fierce Mercy and his album of covers, which, like Fierce Mercy, is fantastic: I Don't Know What To Do With Myself. Hay's album of covers was recorded earlier this year. The title of this is the title of the first cut, which was written by Burt Bacharach and originally sung by Dusty Springfield. As of this writing, my favorite song on I Don't Know What To Do With Myself is The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset."

There are so many songs on both albums that would be great choices for our Friday traditio this week. At least for this week, I am sticking with Hay's original music. While Hay either co-wrote or wrote the songs on Fierce Mercy, the song I chose this week is "Two Friends," written by Michael Georgiades: "Two Friends."

While I didn't have two friends who died in the same week, two friends died this past summer. Even as someone who believes in the resurrection- faith is not knowledge- I have a hard time with death. Like everyone else, I suppose, the older I get the more people who I love pass on (I don't apologize for using that hopeful phrase). The flower of faith is hope. This is what these lyrics from our traditio point to:

What I feel is emptiness
It'll fade over time I guess
Sometimes there's a price to pay for love
And we'll just carry on
With the promise of a brighter dawn
There is no greater gift than love

Bearing the cross

Readings: Isa 50:5-9a; Ps 116:1-6.8-9; James 2:14-18; Mark 8:27-25

One way of taking up the cross is by bearing wrongs, even grievous wrongs, patiently. This is what it means, at least in part, to demonstrate faith by works. Just as forgiving doesn't mean forgetting, remembering does not mean refusing to forgive. While I am not going to develop it in this post, there is an important distinction that needs to be made between forgiveness and reconciliation.

Given that the twentieth anniversary of the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in our nation's capital, and onboard United Flight 93 over Pennsylvania, falls today, I think as Christians it is important to let scripture remind us what it means to revere Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God.

To begin my reflection the way I did is in no way to diminish the evil of 9/11/01. I am certainly not in favor of forgetting those who were killed as they simply went about their daily lives. We can't forget the mothers who did not come home to their children, the husbands who didn't come home to their wives, sons and daughters who left behind bereft parents, dreams that were shattered, etc.

I certainly want to remember the sacrifice made, in too many instances, the ultimate sacrifice, by those first responders who rushed headlong into danger on 9/11, seeking to assist those in peril. Let's not forget those exposed to dust and fumes generated by the collapse of the towers who contracted diseases and who died painful and slower deaths.

Our first reading, taken from one of deutero-Isaiah's Servant Songs, gets to the heart of the matter:

I gave my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who tore out my beard;
My face I did not hide
from insults and spitting

I think one of the perennial questions for Christian is something like- Is Jesus the Christ or not? Is the Lord GOD our help or isn't he? Do we put our faith and trust in God or take matters into our own hands, forgetting God by ignoring Jesus?

You see, those to whom these prophetic words were immediately addressed were Israelites exiled in Babylon. Jerusalem had been destroyed and Israel scattered. God had let a foreign power invade the holy land, destroy the Temple, and take many of the chosen people captive, thus impoverishing not only the worship of God but Israelite society and culture. There was no guarantee of their return and restoration. Yet, this is God's word to them during this time.

Genuinely prophetic words show us the difference between human and divine thinking. Also in deutero-Isaiah, we find these words: "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, my thoughts higher than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:9).

To human thinking, like Peter's in light of Jesus's prediction of the Passion, prophetic words seem strange, counterintuitive, not fit for purpose, etc. In short, what God does (or does not seem to do) is not what I'd do!

Post-9/11, the world, it seems to me, has become more violent, not less so. The first fifth of the twenty-first century has not been a great historical era in terms of peace and prosperity throughout the world.

Bearing the cross means to feel the weight of evil but not to be crushed by it. In light of Saint Paul's insistence that vengeance is God's (Romans 12:19), to seek vengeance is to play God and to do so according to an all-too human conception of what being God means.

"I figured out how to be faithless"

I've been watching the 1990s British crime drama Cracker. Robbie Coltrane is the star of the show. He plays Dr. Edward "Fitz" Fitzgerald. Fitz is a psychologist who assists a squad of Manchester homicide detectives in solving murders. It's a fascinating show, one with some depth. Investigating the crimes of one murderer runs from two to four episodes. Everything isn't wrapped up in less than an hour. While they are sometimes unambiguously "wrapped up" in terms of whodunnit?, the episodes are complex and, hence, somewhat ambiguous. This makes the show very human.

What brings this to mind today is that Fitz is a lapsed Catholic. He is one that not-so-rare species: the Catholic atheist. He constantly grouses about the unrelenting strictness of Church's teaching that he experienced growing up. When the subject of Catholicism comes up, he usually makes sarcastic quips about the strictness of how he learned her teaching, making fun of it ruthlessly, thus implying a lot of negative things about people who seek to live their lives according to it, even if quite sporadically and imperfectly.

In "Men Should Weep," the last crime of the second series, and "Brotherly Love," the first of the third series, Fitz encounters Catholic priests. The priests, if I might say, are portrayed quite well. In both instances, they seem thoughtful and caring, not perfect but not unfriendly, unapproachable, that is, they seem human. In "Brotherly Love," the priest, Father Michael Harvey, who is set to preside at Fitz's mother's funeral, also turns out to be the brother and brother-in-law of murderers who killed several prostitutes. For a time, due to his charitable interactions with the prostitutes who work the precincts of his parish, Fr. Harvey is considered a possible suspect.

During her confession to the police, in which she admits to killing two prostitutes, whom her philandering husband (brother of the priest) patronized, and attempting to murder a third, Maggie Harvey, Fr. Harvey's sister-in-law, tells about the pain she experienced and the guilt she feels having aborted what would've been her fifth child. She did so because her husband convinced her they couldn't afford to support another child. Once she found out how much her husband spent on buying prostitutional services, she realized that having the baby should've not posed an existential financial problem.

Maggie tells her painful experience to Fitz with Fr. Harvey in the room. She castigates the priest for telling her that no matter what she decided vis-á-vis the abortion, she would always be welcome in the parish. She was bitter because she felt that, as her pastor, he should've opposed her having the abortion. She felt that he told her what he did because her husband was his brother. She felt that he was guilty of pastoral misfeasance. You get the vibe that Fitz, too, whose wife has just given birth to a baby boy, thinks the priest advised her wrongly- though, the way Fitz develops as a character, it seems unlikely he would be strongly opposed to elective abortion.

In another scene, Fitz, desirous of receiving communion at his Mom's funeral Mass, despite being quite outspoken about his unbelief, goes to Fr. Harvey for confession. Because Fitz had previously expressed not only his unbelief but the contempt in which he held the Church, Fr. Harvey begins by asking him why he's there, given his unbelief. Fitz tells him it's so that he can receive communion at the upcoming funeral. Fr. Harvey asks why he didn't just receive without confessing. Fitz tells him it's because the Church did such a good job on him as a child.

Fitz starts by confessing his adulterous relationship with Detective Sergeant Jane Penhaligon, which took place between the time his wife left him because of his drinking and gambling, and when she unexpectedly returned pregnant with the child they'd conceived just before her departure. Here's the rub: he tells the priest explicitly that he is not the least contrite about his adultery. He gives Fr. Harvey no context, just says he committed adultery and is not the least bit sorry for it. But, in the end, without making an Act of Contrition, Fr. Harvey grants Fitz absolution. Later, Fitz is shown receiving communion at his Mom's funeral, just prior to leading off his eulogy with his disbelief in life eternal.

I am not so bothered by these inconsistencies and contradictions, they are the stuff of pastoral life. The point I want to make, in a long way (apparently), is that many people who complain about the strictness of their Christian upbringing often don't seem to lose that strict sense of morality. It's not that they live their lives that way. In Fitz's case, quite the opposite! But when they encounter a religious person who does not adhere to the kind of rigidity with which they were raised and have clearly rejected, it's almost as if that religious person is heinous because s/he rejects the black and white.

In the view of someone possessed of such a mentality, you either have to be a moral hardass or a libertine. Like most dilemmas in this realm of life, it is a false one. Fitz had no trouble receiving absolution, despite his lack of belief and contrition, yet seemed to sit in judgment on Fr. Harvey, which strikes me as more than a bit hypocritical. I write that as someone who thinks Fr. Harvey did Maggie (and his brother, not to mention his nephew in utereo) a grave disservice. How do you pastorally encourage someone to violate her own conscience?

I know the existence of hell has become quite controversial (in a good way, it's worth a discussion, even if it tends, as most of these things do, to become polarized: universalists vs. infernalists, each making strawmen out the other's position and kicking them over with great vigor), but assuming there is a hell, as a Christian you need to understand that God is not looking for a reason to put you or anyone else in it. Quite to the contrary!

In light of what I've written, "Graceless," by The National, strikes me as a fitting traditio:

Be opened to God's word

Readings: Isa 35:4-7a; Ps 146:6-10; James 2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37

Listening is difficult. It's hard to sit and pay attention as someone tries to tell you something. A distinction that I've made several times over the years in this regard is that between hearing and listening. We hear lots of noise. So noisy is our society that silence seems strange to many people. Not only strange, silence fr many is uncomfortable, discomforting. If you're not deaf, hearing is inevitable. Listening, however, requires effort. Listening is intentional, highly intentional.

While God's second language is either Hebrew or Yiddish, silence is God's first language. We can hear God amid the noise in which we live but to really listen to God requires silence.

To show you that silence is not easy thing, set the timer on your phone (a major source of noise and distraction) for three minutes. Then, set your phone down. Sit in comfortable and relaxed position. Take a deep breath- breathe in until your lungs are filled and then exhale slowly. Now, take another deep breath. Close your eyes. Then sit, eyes closed, breathing slowly until your timer goes off.

When it comes to listening, it seems that it's difficult for many to just sit and listen to God's word proclaimed at Mass. A lot of folks feel they need to read along. Well, reading and listening are two very different ways of perceiving. It's important to listen to the word of God proclaimed out loud in the midst of the assembly.

Even when the lector is not doing a great job proclaiming the scriptures (lectors, you need to do your work and not just show up and read out loud when you are scheduled), this is a chance to listen more closely. I encourage you to read the readings before coming to Mass on Sunday. This way you can listen better, more intently.

Since we are in Year B of the Sunday lectionary, now in the second week of our return to the Gospel of Mark after our four week sojourn through the Bread of Life Discourse in Saint John's Gospel, disrupted for our celebration of the Blessed Virgin's Assumption, which landed on a Sunday this year, I urge you to set aside two hours this week and listen to the Gospel of Mark proclaimed in its entirety out loud. You can do this by clicking here. My reason for urging this is to demonstrate the difference between listening and reading.

An important feature of pericopes (i.e., distinct episodes) in the Gospels wherein Jesus makes the blind see and the deaf hear is to show that most of us, most of the time are blind and deaf toward God and towards one another. We're easily distracted and very forgetful. Listening to God is not without risk. Taking the deaf man away from the crowd is akin to leading him into silence, where Jesus literally plugs himself into him.

As the Christian spiritual master, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, at the very beginning of Beginning to Pray, notes: prayer is a bit like entering a lion's den. This brings to my mind what C.S. Lewis wrote about Aslan: "He is not a tame lion." It also causes me to remember when the late ragamuffin Rich Mullins said during a concert: "God is a wild man...should you encounter him...hang on for dear life-or let go for dear life is a better way to say it."

When you listen to the Lord, what do you hear? Well, I can't say what you hear. What I hear God say to me is usually between me and God. Sometimes I share something I've heard God say to me. What God says to the Church in scripture by way of moral exhortation is very different from what I hear a lot of Christians say and strongly assert.

As with last week's second reading, this week's is also taken from the Letter of Saint James. Last week we heard that religion that is pure and undefiled largely consists of caring for the poorest among us- the widows and orphans in the societal context of James's letter.

This week, we are reminded that God does indeed show partiality. As Jesus himself demonstrated over and again, doing so in today's Gospel, God is partial toward "those who are poor in the world." As followers of Jesus, we should be too.

Jesus's command, Ephphatha!, an Aramaic word (really, because Jesus spoke it, Aramaic would be a good candidate for God's second language), as the text itself indicates, does not mean "Hear!" It means, "Be opened!" Because episodes handed on in the Gospels are not just recording something someone remembers Jesus doing, a series of "one-offs," as it were, that don't seek to communicate something divine, that is, say something to us, the point of our Gospel today is for our ears, our hearts, our lips to be opened.

Let's not forget the Ephphatha rite in the baptism of infants. During this rite, the one presiding making the Sign of the Cross over the ears and mouth of the child, says:

The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the dumb speak.
May he soon touch your ears to receive his word,
and your mouth to proclaim his faith,
to the praise and glory of God the Father

Too often, Christians want to be closed-off. Jesus was open, especially to those outside of his society and society's various circles. Today's Gospel taking place in the Decapolis, outside Israel, is indicative of this.

Today's Gospel is about the need to listen to God. As Pope Francis has asserted several times, God is a God of surprises. You can't effectively listen if you think you already know what God is going to say to you. Don't let what I wrote above deter you. Take to heart these words from our first reading from Isaiah:

     Be strong, fear not!
Here is your God,
     he comes with vindication;
with divine recompense
     he comes to save you

In the middle of the ocean, there are no landmarks

Today's traditio comes later than I'd planned. It's okay. As I grow older, I laugh at myself for being harsh with myself for not completing all the tasks I set for myself in the time I allot to get it done. It's not like on any given day I don't get quite a bit completed.

This is kinda what this week's traditio is about. It isn't explicitly and maybe not implicitly. It is about what we've come to collectively call "resiliency." It is John Lennon who's usually credited with saying "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." These words appear in the lyrics of Lennon's song "Beautiful Boy." Apparently, it first appeared in a 1957 Reader's Digest article written by Allen Saunders.

I can't speak or write for most people and probably not even for a sizeable majority, only for myself. The observation about life strikes me as true.

Last night I went to an outdoor concert with a dear friend. We saw/heard Squeeze, a very underrated band from my youth. Opening for Squeeze was Colin Hay. Hay, a Scotsman, most famous for his band Men At Work was their opening act. He is a very underrated artist. Using a word my friend used to describe Hay's large body of solo work, his set was "gorgeous." What I think was the second song of his set last night, "Waiting For My Real Life to Begin," is our traditio. I think what is resonating with me today, especially in light of the losses I've endured this summer, is that life moves us inexorably forward.

I've always liked the metaphor of my life as a ship sailing the ocean. The thing about looking behind a ship in the middle of the ocean is that all you see is the wake. In clear conditions, if you follow the ripple of the water made by the ship's passage through it far enough, the wake disappears too. In the middle of the ocean, there are no landmarks.

True, Hay's song is not about being on a ship but waiting ashore for his ship to come in. I guess I would say that you're already on the ship that is your life, especially if, like me, you're in middle age. So, stand on the bow and feel the spray of the ocean. What is still to be determined is where your ship is ultimately headed. You see, sailing the ocean on a ship is perhaps the farthest thing from a dead-end imaginable. Plus, what ports do you want to visit on your journey? You can bet there are perils awaiting.