23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B - Here Is Your God & “Christ Be Beside Me”
The key line in this weekend’s Gospel (Mk. 7:31-37) is what the crowd says at the end: “He has done everything well.” In Greek, this echoes the creation story, recalling that God saw all the things He had done and declared them good. Mark also deliberately evokes Isaiah’s promise, which we hear in today’s First Reading (Is. 35:4-7), that God will make the deaf hear and the mute speak. He even uses a Greek word to describe the man’s condition (mogilalon = “speech impediment”) that’s only found in one other place in the Bible which is in Isaiah’s passage, where the prophet describes the “mute” singing.
The crowd recognizes that Jesus is doing what the prophet Isaiah had foretold. But Mark wants us to see something far greater—that, to use the words from this weekend’s First Reading: “Here is your God.” Notice how personal and physical the drama is in the Gospel. Our focus is drawn to a hand, a finger, ears, a tongue, spitting. In Jesus, God has truly come in the flesh. What He has done is to make all things new, a new creation. As Isaiah promised, He has made the living waters of Baptism flow in the desert of the world. He has set captives free from their sins, as we sing in the Psalm (Ps. 146). He has come that rich and poor might dine together in the Eucharistic feast, as James tells us in the Second Reading (Jm. 2:1-5).
Jesus has done for each of us what he did for the deaf mute. He has opened our ears to hear the Word of God and loosed our tongues that we might sing praises to God. Let us then give thanks to our glorious Lord. Let us say with Isaiah, “Here is our God, He will come and save us.” Let us be rich in faith, that we might inherit the kingdom promised to those who love Him.
In honor of these readings, we present our latest video "Christ Be Beside Me”, a Catholic hymn that reworks the prayer known as 'St. Patrick's Breastplate'. The lyrics were written by Fr. James Quinn, a Scottish priest who saw his hymn writing as an extension of his commitment to the preaching order of Jesuits.
Video can be watched by clicking here or on the picture below:
