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Saturday, September 8, 2018

23rd Ordinary Sunday, Year B, 09.09.2018


Isaiah 35:4-7 / James 2:1-5 / Mark 7:31-37


One of the inventions that had and still has, a great impact on our lives is the radio. Indeed, the radio has come a long way.

Long enough to say that for some of us present here, we know the price of listening to the radio.

Because during the Japanese Occupation in WWII, anyone caught listening to the BBC broadcast will have chopsticks rammed into his ears.

Even when television came into the scene, the radio was still the primary source of news and entertainment.

And it can even be an instrument for vocations.

A priest was sharing his vocation story and he was saying that although he had enough of signs to tell him that God is calling him, he decided to ask God for one more sign, and a rather difficult one.

And he was like telling God:  If, during the next one week, if I see a blue moon, I will enter the seminary.

Well, as the story goes, he was sitting at his desk doing some work, the radio was on, and then he heard this song being played.

“Blue moon, you saw me standing alone, without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own.”

Well, he didn’t see a blue moon, but he heard one, and that was enough for him.

It seems that, many a times, hearing is more powerful than seeing.

And by that same token, we can also say that being deaf is more an impediment that being blind.

In the sense that blindness is quite obvious; whereas it takes a while before we realize that a person is deaf.

And along with deafness, comes a speech impediment.

Because it is strange but nonetheless true, we can only proclaim what we have heard.

In today’s gospel, the people’s admiration of Jesus was unbounded as they proclaimed:  “he has done all things well, he makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.”

That was their proclamation.  But did they hear anything in the first place.

Yes, they saw the deaf and dumb man being cured.  But the fact is that Jesus asked them not to say anything about this.

But why?  Why be so secretive about this spectacular event.?

Well, simply because the spectacular often takes the meaning out of the miracle.

There is a meaning and a purpose behind this healing of the deaf and dumb man.

And it is in those two words that Jesus said: “Be opened.”

And that was what Jesus said to the people then. And we who are here today, and as we listen, do we also understand.

“Be opened,” Jesus said. “Be opened” to what, we might ask.

Today’s gospel account of the healing of the deaf and dumb man is not just about a miracle that Jesus worked.

Rather it is a simple but powerful proclamation of the sound of grace, the sound of God’s grace.

And that is what we are to be opened to – to be opened to the sound of God’s grace.

To be open to the sound of God’s grace so that we can reproduce that sound.

So what is this sound of God’s grace that I am talking about?

Firstly, in our homes.  The sound of God’s grace takes the form of the sound of prayer.

So is the sound of prayer heard in our homes?  Do we have family prayers at home?

God’s grace is waiting to be poured into hearts that are opened at prayer.

And whenever prayer is being said, faith is being built.

Because faith comes from hearing, hearing the faith that is being expressed in prayer.

One of the elements of the faith crises that the Church is facing today is that there are people who do not know how to pray.

Because they have not heard the sound of prayer at home.

And hence they do not know the language of prayer.  Their tongues remain tied when it comes to prayer.

So, vocal prayers like the Rosary prayer and other devotional prayer might seem rather elementary.

But they are indeed necessary when it comes to conveying the sound of God’s grace.

Today Jesus also wants us to listen to a particular sound, the sound of His love, the sound that will open ears and loosen tongues.


The sound of His love that will overcome the irreversible and the impossible situations that are created by deaf ears and stiff tongues, situations that resist the voice of God in prayer.

So we just have to tune into the sound of prayer. Let the sound of prayer just flow in from our ears and into our hearts.


Let us listen to the sound of God’s love so that we can reproduce that sound of love.


God does not speak to us like once in a blue moon.


Whenever we pray, we immediately tune into the sound of God’s love.


And we become God’s radio station that will open ears to the sound of love, and loosen tongues to speak words of love.