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Sacred Scriptures/Liturgy- Commentary on Sunday's Readings |
"Ecology of the Heart"
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFMCap, Pontifical Household Preacher
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
www.zenit.org
(Dt 4:1-2, 6-8; Jas 1:17-18, 21b-22,
27; Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23)
What defiles man?
In the passage from this Sunday's Gospel (Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23),
Jesus cuts at the root the tendency to give more importance to external
gestures and rites than to the heart's dispositions, the desire to
appear better than one is, in short, hypocrisy and formalism.
But today we can draw from this page of the Gospel a teaching not only
of an individual order but also social and collective. The distortion
that Jesus criticized, of giving more importance to external cleanliness
than to purity of heart, is reproduced today on a worldwide scale.
There is very much preoccupation about exterior and physical
contamination from the atmosphere, the water, the hole in the ozone
layer; instead, there is almost absolute silence about interior and
moral defilement.
We are indignant on seeing marine birds emerging from waters
contaminated with petroleum stains, covered with tar and unable to fly,
but we do not show the same concern for our children, vitiated and spent
at an early age because of the mantle of wickedness that already extends
to every aspect of life.
Let's be very clear: It is not a question of opposing the two kinds of
contamination. The struggle against physical contamination and care of
hygiene is a sign of progress and civilization which must not be given
up at any price. However, Jesus told us, on that occasion, that it was
not enough for us to wash our hands, our vessels and all the rest; this
does not go to the root of the problem.
Jesus then launches the program of an ecology of the heart. Let us take
some of the "defiling" things enumerated by Jesus: slander with the
related vice of saying evil things about one's neighbor.
Do we really want to undertake the task of healing our hearts? If so, we
must engage in an all out battle against the habit of gossiping, of
criticizing, of murmuring against absent persons, of making quick
judgments. This is a most difficult poison to neutralize once it has
spread.
Once a woman went to confession to St. Philip Neri, accusing herself of
having spoken badly of some people. The saint absolved her, but gave her
a strange penance. He told her to go home, to get a chicken and return
to him, plucking its feathers along the way. When she was in his
presence again, he said to her: "Now go back home and collect one by one
the feathers that you let fall when you were coming here."
"Impossible!" exclaimed the woman. "In the meantime the wind has
dispersed them in all directions." That's the point St. Philip wished to
make.
"Now you see -- he said -- how it is impossible to take back murmuring
and slander once they have left the mouth."
[Translation by ZENIT]
Code: ZE06090801
Date: 2006-09-08
Father Cantalamessa on Curing Our Deafness
Pontifical Household Preacher on This Sunday's Gospel
ROME, SEPT. 8, 2006 (Zenit.org).-
Here is a translation of a commentary by Capuchin Father Raniero
Cantalamessa, preacher to the Pontifical Household, on the liturgical
readings for this Sunday's liturgical readings.
* * *
Ephphatha! Be opened!
The passage of the Gospel refers us to a beautiful healing wrought by
Jesus.
"And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and
begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him off by himself away from
the crowd. He put his finger into the man's ears and, spitting, touched
his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, "Ephphatha!"
(that is, "Be opened!"), and (immediately) the man's ears were opened,
his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly" (Mark 7:32-35).
Jesus did not perform miracles as someone waving a magic wand or
clicking his fingers. That sigh that escaped from him at the moment of
touching the ears of the deaf man tells us that he identified with the
people's sufferings; he participated intensely in their misfortune, made
it his burden.
On one occasion, after Jesus had cured many sick people, the evangelist
comments: "He took our infirmities and bore our diseases" (Matthew
8:17).
Christ's miracles were never an end in themselves; they were signs. What
Jesus once did for a person on the physical plane indicates what he
wants to do every day for every person on the spiritual plane.
The man cured by Jesus was deaf and dumb; he could not communicate with
others, hear his voice and express his feelings and needs. If deafness
and dumbness consist in the inability to communicate plainly with one's
neighbor, to have good and beautiful relationships, then we must
acknowledge immediately that we are all more or less deaf and dumb, and
this is why Jesus addressed to all that cry of his: Ephphatha, Be
opened!
The difference is that physical deafness does not depend on the
individual and he is altogether blameless, whereas moral deafness is
blameworthy.
Today the term "deaf" is avoided and we prefer to speak of "auditive
disability," precisely to distinguish the simple fact of not hearing
about moral deafness.
We are deaf, to give an example, when we do not hear the cry for help
raised to us and we prefer to put between ourselves and our neighbor the
"double glaze" of indifference. Parents are deaf when they do not
understand that certain strange and disordered attitudes of their
children hide a cry for attention and love.
A husband is deaf when he cannot see in his wife's nervousness the sign
of exhaustion or the need for a clarification. And the same applies to
the wife.
We are deaf when we shut ourselves in, out of pride, in an aloof and
resentful silence, while perhaps with just one word of excuse or
forgiveness we could return peace and serenity to the home.
We men and women religious have times of silence in the day, and we
sometimes accuse ourselves in confession, saying: "I have broken the
silence." I think that at times we should accuse ourselves of the
opposite and say: "I have not broken the silence."
What decides the quality of communication, however, is not simply to
speak or not to speak, but to do so or not to do so out of love. St.
Augustine said to people in an address: It is impossible to know in
every circumstance exactly what should be done: to speak or to be
silent, to correct or to let things go.
Here is a rule that is valid for all cases: "Love and do what you will."
Be concerned to have love in your heart then, if you speak, it will be
out of love, if you are silent it will be out of love, and everything
will be alright because only good comes from love.
The Bible helps us to understand where the rupture of communication
begins, where our difficulty originates to relate in a healthy and
beautiful way to one another. While Adam and Eve were in good relations
with God, their mutual relationship was also beautiful and ecstatic:
"This is flesh of my flesh." As soon as their relationship with God was
interrupted, through disobedience, the mutual accusations began: "It was
he, it was she ..."
It is from there that one must begin again. Jesus came to "reconcile us
with God" and thus to reconcile us with one another. He does so above
all through the sacraments. The Church has always seen in the seemingly
strange gestures that Jesus did with the deaf-mute (he put his fingers
into his ears and touched his tongue) a symbol of the sacraments thanks
to which he continues "touching" us physically to heal us spiritually.
That is why in baptism the minister carries out gestures on the one
being baptized as Jesus did on the deaf-mute: He puts his fingers into
his ears and touches the tip of his tongue, repeating Jesus' word:
"Ephphatha, Be opened!"
The sacrament of the Eucharist in particular helps us to overcome the
inability to communicate with our neighbor, making us experience the
most wonderful communion with God.
[Translation by ZENIT]
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
