Homily: 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

September 8, 2024

My dear brothers and sisters, our reflection today centers on this miraculous healing (Ephphatha) of a deaf and dump man effected by Jesus in the gospel reading of today. Perhaps, the most striking thing about this episode is that Jesus employed both His spiritual powers and the usage of material concoction to bring about this miraculous healing. By Jesus’ action, we can learn a deep lesson that attention should be given to these two aspects of our existence, the spiritual and the material, none should be deemphasized because a close connection exists between the two.

First from the material/physical angle, Jesus used his saliva to prepare what we can call a medicine and touched it on the ears of the man and the man started hearing and speaking. We know Jesus possess the superabundance of the spiritual powers to just look at the man and the miracle would be done, but from His actions, we can learn that Jesus did not want us to undermine the importance of medication when we are sick. Jesus teaches us to use the different created things which nature gives to make the world a better place. This too follows chronologically from the creation account, we remember Genesis 1:28, when God created human being, He asked them to fill the earth and subdue, that is make the best from the material things of the earth. In Genesis chapter 2 when God created man, He first fashioned Him from the dust of the earth and breathed unto Him the breath of life. We can see the marriage of the material and the spiritual sides even in the very creation of human beings.

In some parts of the world, some Christians maintain a radical and fundamentalist view of religion, whereby they reject medicine in the moments of sickness, some do not even commit themselves to sincere hard work to make the world a better place. Instead, they pray all day for God to cure them miraculously of their sickness and for God to miraculously feed them with Manna from heaven. This type of faith is inadequate and obviously not the wish of Christ for us.

From the other angle, Jesus did not emphasize our material and physical powers and then throw the spiritual angle to the dumpster. No! We can see that as He used what we may call medicine on the man, at the same time, he looked up to heaven and prayed to God for the man to be healed. So, He did not neglect the spiritual side of our existence either, a great lesson for us. Unfortunately, in our modern world, many are increasingly thinking that we do not need God. Afterall, if I need money, I get a job, If I need a home, I pay my mortgage, If I become sick, I go to the hospital, then what do I need God for. Brothers and sisters, this type of thinking is a scam. The word of God in Psalm 14:1 tells us; ‘fools say in their hearts, there is no God.’ The more the modern man tries to delete God from their existence, the more the evil one occupies the empty space because nature abhors vacuum and the by-product is endless violence and destruction.

However, when we are with God and make sincere efforts to make the best from created things, we would turn the face of the world to be perennially good. You see the exclamation from people when Jesus cured this man with speech impediment, ‘He has done everything well!’ This exclamation reminds us of the creation account, after creation, God saw that all He made was good. It was only when our first parents left God and clung to the serpent that the goodness in the world became destroyed. Jesus has come back again to teach us that we have to be with God as we sincerely make the best of the created things so that all will be good for us and our exclamation would be, ‘God has indeed made everything well.”