23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
St. Mary's Cathedral, Sydney
Is 35:4-7; James 2:1-5; Mk 7:31-37
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
6 Sep 2009
As usual this Sunday Mass is one in a series of appointments I have at the end of a week and during the early days of the week that is starting. On Saturday morning I celebrated Mass for the feast day of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, whom I still like to speak of as "Mother Teresa", when we thanked God for the forty years of service in Australia from the Missionaries of Charity; those nuns who dress in the long white, blue-fringed tea-towel material habits. The material is chosen because it is very cheap.
Because as Catholics we are instinctively universalist, we tend to take it for granted that we have seventy such nuns, working among the battlers and the suffering in different parts of Australia, although most of them are not Australian born. Despite a considerable missionary effort over the last fifty years by Australians serving overseas, we have always had the services in Australia of more overseas born priests, religious and dedicated lay workers than we export for missionary activity. The work of Mother Teresa's sisters in many of the most difficult and abandoned situations is a wonderful expression of Christ's love.
I then had lunch with the executive of the Australian Catholic Students Association and their chaplain Father Greg Jordan SJ. They are active in the Catholic chaplaincy groups at our secular universities. At Sydney University they have occasional moments of excitement from the regular hostility of left wing secular groups, usually radical socialists or homosexual activists, but in most places the most important enemy is indifference. Many students claim to be tone deaf to religion, or too busy. I even discovered that in Queensland there are universities where all religious groupings are prohibited. I welcome these students to the Cathedral this morning and commend their important witness to Christ Our Lord.
And next Tuesday morning I will confer here in the Cathedral the awards for student excellence, with one prize winner from each Catholic school's year twelve. It is one of the happiest celebrations in the Cathedral calendar and those parents, teachers and fellow students who attend are much encouraged as they hear the brief accounts of the individual contributions.
Regular attendees here at the Cathedral realise that I nearly always preach about the readings of the Sunday and might be wondering how this long introduction does tie in with today's scripture.
In Isaiah we hear that the signs of God's coming are that the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dumb will speak and the lame regain their agility and be able to "leap like a deer".
The psalm repeats a similar thought, explaining that it is God who performs these wonders, as well as offering justice to the oppressed, thwarting the wicked while protecting the strangers, the widows and the orphans. The Jews were very much people of this world and they expected God to intervene in history in their favour.
In Mark's gospel we see Our Lord meeting one of these criteria for Godly presence among us as he cured the deaf man with an impediment of speech. He touched his ears and then his tongue with spittle and the dumb man spoke clearly. It was another proof that Jesus was the anointed one, the chrismed one, Christ the Messiah.
Most of us cannot perform miracles and this means we have to demonstrate God's reality and presence in other ways.
I believe it to be a great mistake to ignore or undervalue the intellectual search for God, because I maintain that it is much more reasonable to believe in God the Creator, who put the world together according to all those extraordinary beautiful, and often simple, principles of science and mathematics.
But I also acknowledge that most people do not recognize God, or come to know Him through their intellect, through their study of philosophy or science; but through the good deeds of God's followers.
In different ways the Missionaries of Charity are doing the work that Christ did, helping those who need it and thereby pointing to the reality of God among us, that Christ is still active through his followers.
The second reading is from James, a plain spoken fellow, who warns us against favouring the rich and well-to-do, while putting the poor in second place, even when they are not completely ignored or rejected. Catholic groups such as the Missionaries of Charity, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, Caritas Australia are wonderful examples of serving the battlers.
Catholic student leaders at our universities demonstrate that this life-giving tradition of faith, hope and love still continues to bring water and nourishment to an increasingly arid landscape, while the student leaders from our school communities, often wonderful oases in a more hostile set of surroundings, demonstrate some of the excellent fruits of faith at work.
Not even service of the poor is a substitute for the faith. Advocacy for justice is something else again, different from practical help and service and this too is no substitute for faith.
The worship and love of God is the first commandment and we demonstrate our love for God by the loving service of His creatures.
Faith without works is dead, but good works without faith usually run out of steam fairly quickly. There are too many disappointments and difficulties for the Godless to persevere.
Let me conclude with a few words from Leo the Great, pope and saint (+450) taken from today's prayer of the Church
"Mercy demands that you be merciful, righteousness that you be righteous, so that the creator may be shown forth in the creature and that, in the mirror of man's heart as in the lines of a portrait, the image of God may be reflected".
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
