Category: Ordinary Time Year B

‘Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.’ (vv. 33 – 34)
Imagine a room:

In the first corner there is a powerful dictator who rules a country.

His word commands armies and his shifting moods intimidate subordinates. He wields a brutal power.

In the second corner sits a gifted athlete at the peak of her physical prowess, a woman whose quickness and strength have few equals.

Her skills are a graceful power for which she is much admired and envied.

The third corner holds a rock star whose music and charisma can electrify an audience and fill a room with a soulful energy.

Her face is on billboards, and she is a household name. That’s still another kind of power.

Finally, we have too in the room a newborn, a baby, lying in its bassinet/crib, seemingly without any power or strength whatsoever, unable to even ask for what it needs.

Which of these is ultimately the most powerful?

The irony is that the baby ultimately wields the greatest power.

The athlete could crush it, the dictator could kill it, and the rock star could out-glow it in sheer dynamism, but the baby has a different kind of power.
We have a language we only use around babies (usually unintelligible to anyone!)

The radio and TV volume are dependent on the sleep pattern of the newborn, as is the time to start up the motor mower.

The baby can touch hearts in a way that a dictator, an athlete, or a rock star cannot.

Its innocent, wordless presence, without physical strength, can transform a room and a heart in a way that guns, muscle, and charisma cannot.

We watch our language and actions around a baby, less so around athletes and rock stars.

The powerlessness of a baby touches us at a deeper moral place.

And this is the way we find and experience God’s power here on earth, sometimes to our great frustration, and this is the way that Jesus was deemed powerful during his lifetime.

Jesus, standing wordless before Pilate might be the most power-filled moment in the entire Gospel story.

The entire Gospels make this clear, from beginning to end.

Jesus was born as a baby, powerless, and he died hanging helplessly on a cross with bystanders mocking his powerlessness.

Yet both his birth and his death manifest the kind of power upon which we can ultimately build our lives.

They are two moments which are still celebrated the world over.

The world stops at Christmas and Good Friday. Most shops are shut, public transport changes it schedules, usually meaning fewer services, and, maybe ironically, our Churches are most full!

When the Gospels speak of Jesus as “having great power” they use the Greek word, exousia, which might be best rendered as vulnerability.

Jesus’ real power was rooted in a certain vulnerability, like the powerlessness of a child.

The Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926) has a fascinating little book titled, Letters to a Young Poet.

At the heart of the book is an aspiring young poet’s request to Rilke to let him know whether he ought to be a poet or not.

The young poet is insistent, sending copies of poems he has written.

At one point Rilke writes

“ . . . .  I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it – but take whatever comes with great trust, and if only it comes out of your own will, out of some need of your inmost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.”

Perhaps Rilke’s advice is advantageous for us, given the question in today’s Gospel (Mk. 8: 27 – 35)

“Who do you say I am?” (Mk. 8:29)

‘Try to love the question’ – who do you say I am?

‘Live the question’ – who do you say I am?

And live along some distant day into the answer.

Rilke’s final words of advice to the young man, perhaps had been written for us “and after all I do want to advise you to keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your innermost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.”

Keep growing quietly and seriously.

Don’t look outside for answers to questions “that only your innermost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.”

 

My name is James, the son of Anna and Barnabas.

Being completely deaf, I was deprived of so much that others take for granted.

I had never heard my parents call my name.

I had never heard the shouts of children at play, the song of a bird, of the wind in trees, the ocean as it fell upon the shoreline.

I never heard a word of comfort or encouragement.

The fact that I was practically dumb as well added to my sense of deprivation and isolation.

And when you are different, people, often, are afraid of you. People avoid you. People hurry past you.

I was full of self-pity.

One day a man came to my village, I couldn’t hear his name, but I could tell from his dress he was a Jew.

What on earth was he doing in a Gentile village in the Decapolis?

Many of those from the village gathered around him.

I followed them.

Many of the villagers looked at me with scorn, “What are you doing here?” their eyes said, ‘you should have stayed at home” the grimace on their face declared.

This man took me aside from the crowd and gave me all his attention.

Now, I felt important.

He did not speak to me as it would have been a waste of words.

Instead, he touched me. A tender, patient, loving touch.

He made me feel what I couldn’t hear.

Then he put his finger into his mouth, touched mine, and said, “Be opened!”

And I was!

I heard children laughing, birds singing, the wind in the trees. And I laughed with the children and sang with the birds.

Why am I telling you this?

I discovered many new things in the months that followed.

My first discovery was that a touch offered in love heals!

Also, I learned that many people listen without hearing; many have loose tongues that would be better tied; many have ears to hear, and tongues to proclaim.

But why proclaim if no one is listening? And at times all are proclaiming so loudly that no one can hear.

Hearing and speech are great gifts. They are heart gifts.

It is only with the heart that we can listen rightly, and only with the heart that we can speak truly.

You know the very best thing about receiving my hearing? I heard my Mother and Father call my name!

And the very best thing about receiving my speech? I could proclaim, “I love you!”

The mother of a recently married young woman came to the parish house to request the Sacrament of Baptism for her newlyborn grandchild.

From somewhere inside of me, my wisdom figure spoke ‘for’ me! “Do the parents wish that their child to be baptised?”

Silence!

“They do not go to Church,” the mother acknowledged into the silence.

“If the parents wish that their child is baptised we can set a date” I suggested. “Invite the parents to call and make an appointment.”

“They are not interested!” exclaimed the mother (of the bride), “what if the baby dies?”

I replied with genuine honesty, “God will meet the child with open arms!”

The Gospel today makes for uncomfortable listening, especially the line, “the doctrines they teach are nothing but human commandments.” (Mark 7:7)

In a tradition as old, as rich and as broad as the Catholic Church, there are bound to be some “only human regulations.”

A clear example would be the traditional teaching about Limbo, where the unbaptised babies supposedly went.

It caused a great deal of pain and distress, as parents and grandparents and other family members concluded their deceased babies would never, ever enjoy the presence of God.

St Augustine believed in Limbo.

Pope Benedict XVI set it firmly aside. Still, it took fifteen centuries…