23rd Sunday Year B - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2015

For the coming Year of Mercy, Pope Francis will grant to all priests the power to forgive in Confession people who have committed the sin of abortion. [Up until now, Canon Law has restricted the power to bishops only.] It is not that Pope Francis is going soft on abortion, but, like Jesus before him, he has listened instinctively to people’s hearts and has heard in some, at least, the panic and despair from which their sin proceeds.

I have been thinking of the Pope’s initiative in the light of today’s Gospel. Jesus healed a man who was both deaf and dumb. In recounting the incident, Mark mentioned that Jesus sighed before performing his healing – probably because he saw in the man’s disability one further indication of the brokenness of our world. Deafness particularly excluded the man from human conversation and meaningful communication, leaving him effectively isolated. After the incident Jesus ordered the bystanders to tell no one about it – probably because they were enthusiastic for the wrong reasons. This was magic! This was great! Someone like that was just what they needed! For them, Jesus was a celebrity; for him, that was the last thing he wanted.

From time to time in the Gospels Jesus repeated the lament of Isaiah, ‘They have eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear', and perhaps we could add, 'mouths that do not speak'. What was Jesus referring to? For him, what would give life to a sin-scarred world was not just to hear and to speak [Most people already do that.], but to hear and to speak with love.

I believe that one, among many, of the factors affecting the Church’s virtual irrelevance in today’s world is that we have not always spoken with obvious love, compassion and hope. Nor have we listened firstly with love, wanting to understand and to hear the hearts of others before ever opening our mouths to speak. One of the reasons why Pope Francis is so willingly listened to is because people see him as one who has listened to and connected with their hearts, and who then speaks with mercy and compassion. He listens and speaks with love.

In today’s Western World, authority drawn from status or coercive or legal power has lost its clout. People will not listen to Popes or Bishops or priests, even parents, simply because of their role. There is no way we can successfully impose on others what we think is right. There was a time when the Church enjoyed some status, when it could muster a reasonably disciplined voting bloc. Those days have largely gone. We are back to the days of the early Church when Christians had no coercive power and no measurable influence at all on government and legislation. They simply lived, and were seen to live, what they believed. And what they believed, above all, was the mercy of God.

In this Western world, our authority will be in proportion to our witness. No longer can we count on shortcuts to impose social conformity. We can rely solely on the witness value of our lives.  That is not bad news, but good news. However, it does call for continuing and radical conversion, firstly, from us. We need to learn to listen with love. We need to learn to speak with love – and, despite wonderful exceptions, we are not good at that.

I believe that in order to be able to listen with love and to speak with love, we must firstly make room in our lives for silence. In our super-busy lives, in this ever-chattering world, we must prioritise silence – or we have no chance to listen and to speak with love. Love grows out of silence. Even just any prayer is not enough. I believe there is need in our lives also for silent prayer. The word “contemplation” may be unfamiliar and the prospect daunting, yet it is precisely to that that Pope Francis calls us all.