9/6/2015 – Homily for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Isaiah 35:4-7A, James 2:1-5, Mark 7:31-37

     If you recall, last week we heard from the 1^st chapter of the letter of James.   That reading challenged us to be doers of God’s word, not just hearers.  That reading challenged us to not just passively receive our faith, but to put it into action.  Our reading last week ended by saying that a pure, undefiled religion is one that cares for the least in society, for the widow and the orphan.  We will continue to hear from James in our 2^nd readings throughout the month of September.  From today’s reading from James, we get the sense that the Early Church struggled with some of the same issues we face in our modern world. It sounds like the prominent, well-to-do members of the Early Church could be judgmental and wanted to exclude the poor and the marginalized from their Christian communities.  As most of you know, as a missionary I got into the practice of traveling on the Greyhound bus when I needed to travel a long distance.  When I was a seminarian at Sacred Heart Seminary in Milwaukee, I would travel during the Christmas holiday and spring break to Winnipeg, Canada to visit friends up there; it was a trip that would take about a day and a half.   I remember one year, I arrived back in downtown Milwaukee at about 4:30 am after my Christmas break in Winnipeg; I had just arrived at the downtown bus station and was going to take one of the early morning transit buses out to the seminary in the suburbs.  Here I was, standing downtown at the bus stop with my backpack with my big winter coat on. I guess I looked a bit grubby.  The next thing I knew, a van pulled up offering me a paper bag with a couple of sandwiches in it, wanting to escort me to a homeless shelter where I could get warm and get off the streets.  They assumed that I was a homeless person standing around downtown in the early morning hours with nowhere to go.  At least they wanted to help me rather than arrest me for being a vagrant.  If we believe that this is God’s Church and not our own personal Church, if we believe in God’s love and mercy and salvation for all, we have to really live out that ideal rather than just saying that we believe it.  We here at St James have emphasized that we want to be a welcoming parish to all, and we really have tried to implement steps to show that, from greeters and an information table that we’ve started putting into place, to joyful music that we invite everyone to sing with us.  Again and again in his writing and his public speeches, Pope Francis has challenged us to be a Church that is welcoming and inviting to all, a Church that reaches out to the poor and the oppressed and the marginalized in an intentional way.

      Isaiah tells us to be strong, to fear not, good words of advice in a rapidly changing world where we can be frightened by what we see going on around us.  I recently saw a quote from the famous Catholic author Flannery O’Connor that said:  Often, human nature vigorously resists God’s grace because his grace changes us and change is painful.  There was a big change in the life of the deaf mute in today’s Gospel when Jesus touched his ears and his tongue, yelling up to the heavens: ““Ephphatha!” “Be opened!”  This man wanted change in his life.  He wanted to be able to talk and to hear. He wanted to be a part of his community in the fullest sense possible.  And it was his friends that brought him to Jesus, who encouraged him to be open to change and be open to Jesus’ healing presence in his life.  After this healing, his ears were not only opened to hear, but they were opened to the reality of Jesus in his life, to the reality of the salvation and redemption that Jesus freely opened him.

      How can we be more open and more intentional on our journey of faith? Next week, we start our year of religious education.  We are so blessed to have so many teachers and assistants who are willing to be there for our children and youth, to help them learn the foundations of our faith.  We also want to encourage our adults who are not teaching to enter one of the adult faith formation groups.  Last year, we started an adult faith formation class that studied Gus Lloyd’s apologetics course.   Apologetics is perhaps a misunderstood concept in our modern Church.  We learn more about our faith and learn how to articulate what we believe not only so we grow in our understanding of our Catholic faith, but also so we can answer questions that others ask us about what we believe as Catholics and  to enter into a healthy dialogue with those from other faith traditions.  This group has been renamed “Coffee and Creed” to emphasis the fellowship and learning that will take place, how we want to learn what our Church really teaches and stands for. This group will be merging with our Timely Topics group to study a course by the Jesuit priest Thomas Scirghi called Signs of God’s Grace – a Journey through the Sacraments.  Roy Jaeger and the other members of the adult faith formation group are really excited about this new course and the other offerings we have this year.   Also, I want to mention that we are starting our RCIA program on Tuesday evenings from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm.  Not only is this program for those who want to enter the Church or for non-Catholics who want to learn more about our faith, but we also invite any members of our parish who want to be a part of that journey to come and join us and learn along the way. Please consult the bulletin for a description of what we are offering this year and please prayerfully consider joining us. 

      In the spirit of James’ message of not being exclusive in our community of faith, of Jesus’ call of opening up the life of the deaf mute, a paragraph in our Good Leaders, Good Shepherds workshop this past week really spoke to me.  It said: “Authentic Catholics in the 21^st century not only accept responsibility for their own faith journey; they also contribute to the journeys of others. They are unselfish in their efforts, charitable in their pursuits, and giving of their time.”  Let us be open to the way our Lord is calling out to us today in his Holy Word, not only in our own journey of faith, but in the journeys of our brothers and sisters.