Homily for 8 September 2024 by Fr. Oscarito Antonio Boongaling
23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
There was this story in Japan about a little girl who wanted to prepare a special meal on her mother’s birthday. She took out carefully her mother’s favorite bowl from the cupboard. As she was climbing down the stool she used, her foot got caught in one of its legs. She fell to the floor and let go of the bowl which broke into pieces. She began to cry. Her father rushed to help her stand. He picked up the pieces and asked, “What do we have here?” “I tried to be so careful,” she sobbed. “I just wanted to do something special for Mama’s birthday. Now it’s broken. I can’t fix it.” “Well, then,” her father spoke, rolling up his sleeves. “We will fix it. But it won’t be the same as it was before. It’ll be even better.”
The little girl watched in wonder as her father, a talented artist, mixed a gold lacquer with a few scoops of rice flour to make an adhesive. He placed the broken shards of the bowl together with the glue. She watched in amazement as the bowl took shape, gold gleaming from the cracks. Her father had been right: somehow, it was more beautiful than it had been in the first place. Her grandfather, who had been watching from a nearby stool, said. “There will be things in our lives that break, no matter how careful we are, just like this bowl. But that doesn’t mean that they cannot be fixed. What was once broken can become something more beautiful.”
In our first reading, the prophet Isaiah declares the good news as he says, “Take courage, fear not, do not despair, God has come to restore everything to wholeness. He will heal physical infirmities of humanity, he will heal the brokenness even in nature (as deserts will be vibrant with water) and related to this is the metaphorical imagery that God will also bring out healing of hearts and spirits that had been dried out and broken because of sin and infidelity.” This is what God had also spoken through the prophet Jeremiah (Jer. 30:17) – that days are coming when God will bring his people in exile back to their homeland with the promise of “restoring them to health and healing their wounds.” It is God’s desire that we be restored to wellbeing.
The responsorial psalm portrays further how God goes about healing the brokenness of humanity – securing justice for the oppressed, providing for those who are in need, granting liberty to those held in chains, healing those who suffer from illnesses and disabilities. God had fulfilled these things in the experiences of his people Israel in the Old Testament, using Israel as a light to make him known to other nations (Isaiah 49:6). And God is continuously doing these works in the New Testament through the person of his Son Jesus Christ. “In Jesus we see the presence of God’s dynamic reign at work.” (Lamar Williamson Jr., Interpretation: Mark, pp. 139-140.)
In the Gospel, we find Jesus traveling through the Gentile territory of the Decapolis. Even in that area, his reputation of being a miracle worker and wonder healer precedes him. There were people who brought to him a deaf man who also had a speech impediment. Jesus performs elaborate steps in healing this man – he moves him away from the crowd. ‘Jesus must have been sensitive to the man’s experiences of brokenness’ and rejection and avoids making him a spectacle to others. (Gospel Power Sept. 8, 2024) “Then Jesus puts his fingers into the man’s ears. By doing this, Jesus directs the man’s attention into his heart. (Because the heart is the spiritual center of human beings. It is the source of our listening and speaking. If the person’s heart is open especially to the divine, the person can listen to God and speak what he hears from God. When Jesus uses his spit to apply it to the man’s tongue, it is a deep gesture of being empathic and interiorly in communion with the man. (Saliva creates a humid environment, thus improving the survival and functioning of inflammatory cells that are crucial for wound healing. In addition, saliva contains several proteins which play a role in the different stages of wound healing. My grandma used her saliva on my wounds – her spittle and her touch healed and comforted me.)
When Jesus looked up into heaven and groaned the word Ephphatha, he signifies his openness and trust in the Father who desires the wholeness of every human being. He unites the heart/the center of this man to the very heart of God. (John Shea, Mark Year B: Eating With the Bridegroom pp 221-224) Jesus wanted the man to know that he is also a child of God. By healing this man’s deafness and muteness, Jesus took away what hindered the man from communicating with fellow human beings and with God.
In his letter in our second reading, the apostle James is presenting to us an invitation and a challenge. Do we add further to a person’s brokenness when we permit and praise his or her excesses – or when we discriminate against those who lack such attractive character and appearances? Let us face the truth, that while we live, we will behold our brokenness. Yet God, in his loving mercy, intends that we be restored to our wholeness. Let us pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit so that we may be instruments of God’s healing grace to one another.
God uses the broken beautifully… It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to pour down rain, broken crop yields seeds, broken seeds give way to new grain, broken grain is made into bread, broken bread to give us strength. (Finding Beauty in Brokenness by Vance Havner)
