XXIII Sunday in Ordinary Time  Year B  (8 September 2024)

1. In the first reading of today's liturgy, the prophet Isaiah addresses the Jews deported to Babylon returning to Jerusalem: "Courage, do not be afraid! Behold your God, vengeance comes, divine recompense. He comes to save you'. There is one word that might come as a surprise: 'divine vengeance'.  It is best to point out immediately that it does not have the same meaning with respect to the way we feel. Contextualising it in the historical moment, we understand that when the prophet speaks of God's vengeance, he is referring to salvation, and we understand this better if we formulate the text like this: 'Behold God's vengeance: He comes and will save you', and then: 'Behold God's reward: He himself comes to save you'. Even more helpful in perceiving this message of hope are the promises that follow: the sick will be healed, the blind will regain their sight, the deaf will regain their hearing, the crippled will leap like deer and the tongue of the mute will shout for joy. These promises taste like soothing and encouraging balm to the ears of a people deported to Babylon and scarred by the atrocious wounds inflicted by Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem. It is to them that God assures future days of prosperity and rediscovered joy. But there is more: in the light of the historical and religious framework of that time, 'vengeance' was perceived favourably by the Jews because they knew that the Lord would never abandon his people and would indeed fight against the evil that oppressed them. "Divine vengeance" therefore meant restoring dignity to those who make up this people that the Lord has chosen for himself and who place all expectation in him. And it is precisely in this that God's glory shines. To better understand, it is worth adding that at the beginning of its history, the people of the Bible imagined a vengeful God as men are, and it was only through a centuries-long purification of faith through the preaching of the prophets that they began to discover the true face of the Lord. Then, although the word 'vengeance' remained, its content changed completely, as it did with other words, for example 'sacrifice' and 'the fear of God'. It took centuries to come to recognise the true face of God, a God different from what one could imagine, a God who is love and spends his love for all men.  With the phrase: 'Behold the divine reward. He comes to save you', the prophet wants to imply that God loves more than any other in the world and in any trial, pain and physical or moral humiliation, he does not delay in intervening by manifesting his mercy. How necessary it is to rediscover divine mercy in our lives! God comes to save us, comes to raise us up. A fundamental aspect of faith is precisely the certainty that He has already conquered the arrogance of evil with the omnipotence of His merciful love, and even if satanic forces operating at various levels apparently dominate the world, the Christian does not succumb to the temptation of pessimism because he knows that he is loved by the One who in so many ways wants to show us His Fatherly tenderness and never abandons us.

2. Today is for us the invitation that Isaiah addresses to the exiles in Babylon who return to Jerusalem. Faith assures us that humanity is surely waiting for the definitive deliverance from every form of slavery and offence to human dignity, from every risk of physical and moral blindness that disrupts peace. The Messiah is the promised saviour: Jesus' contemporaries must have understood this because, presenting himself as the Messiah in the synagogue of Nazareth (cf. Luke 4), Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah himself: "The Spirit of the LORD, of GOD, is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the humble; he has sent me to bind up those whose hearts are broken, to proclaim liberty to those who are slaves, the opening of the prison to the captives, to proclaim the year of the LORD's favour, the day of vengeance of our God" (61:1-2).  Note, however, that he purposely omits the last words of the prophecy: 'the day of vengeance of our God', to make it clear that he comes to give hope and salvation to the poor, the prisoners, the oppressed, who would have had difficulty understanding the word 'vengeance'. Now his every action will have the face of mercy.  Mercy, of which tangible signs are the blind who regain their sight, the crippled who walk again, the lepers who are cleansed, the deaf who are able to hear again, the dead who are raised, and above all the gospel proclaimed to the poor, as Christ affirms when replying to John the Baptist's disciples who came to ask him if he is the awaited Messiah (Lk 7:22). This is the gospel: God raises us from our misery and saves us, and this appears clearly in today's page of Mark's gospel (ch.7). Jesus is in pagan land - the territory of the Decapolis - where he heals a man suffering from a double infirmity: he is deaf and mute. The evangelist uses the Greek term "magilalos" (which means one who speaks with difficulty because he is deaf), rarely used in the New Testament and only once found in the Old Testament precisely in the text from Isaiah that we heard in the first reading: "the tongue of the mute shall shout for joy". The evangelist assures that this prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus and proof of this is the healing of the deaf mute, symbol of humanity unable to hear and therefore with serious difficulties in communicating (he only stammers). Jesus is asked "to lay his hand on him" and he accomplishes something he had never done before. He pulls him away from the crowd and repeats ritual gestures of the healers: he puts his fingers in his ears and touches his tongue with saliva. Jesus does not change these gestures but imbues them with a new meaning. Unlike the healers, he looks up to the sky, emits a sigh and says: "Effata, that is open".  By raising his eyes upwards, he manifests that he heals by the power conferred on him by the Father. As for the sigh, it is rather a groan: the same word is used that St Paul, in his letter to the Romans, uses to describe both the impatience of creation waiting for deliverance and the way the Holy Spirit prays in the hearts of believers "with inexpressible groans" (Rom 8:26). In the groaning of Jesus we can perceive on the one hand humanity waiting and calling for deliverance, and on the other hand the Spirit interceding for us so that no human suffering leaves us indifferent. The gospel closes with the people full of amazement proclaiming: "He has done all things well: he makes the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak". We perceive here an anticipation of the profession of faith of the Christian community that will be total and perfect on the lips of the centurion under the cross of Christ towards the end of Mark's gospel: "Truly this man was the Son of God" (Mk 15:39).

3. Effatha, i.e. 'Open up' is one of the few Aramaic words directly quoted in the gospel and has remained unchanged in every language. It is found in the rite of baptism, when the celebrant touches the ears and lips of the baptised, adding: "May the Lord Jesus, who made the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak, grant that you may soon hear his word, and profess your faith to the praise and glory of God the Father. Every day we hear in the liturgy the psalmist who sings: "Lord open my lips and my mouth shall proclaim your praise (Ps 50/51:17), and the Apostle Paul's affirmation returns frequently in preaching: "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except under the power of the Holy Spirit" (1 Co 12:3). Only God can open man's heart and make his lips worthy of honouring him. Only God saves us: it is, however, up to our freedom to choose to love him and proclaim his praise not simply in words, but with our whole life, becoming a living gospel.

Happy Sunday + Giovanni D'Ercole