11ème Dimanche après la Pentecôte 2008

1 Cor 15, 1-10 ; Mc 7, 31-37

Dear Brothers & Sisters,

Last Sunday many of you, I suppose, were listening to Pope Benedict speaking gently but firmly to the youth gathered at Randwick, Sydney, with his typical German accent. Today you have to endure another foreign accent. If I see rosaries flourishing during the homily or people looking at the flies I shall understand that my accent is definitely bad! This said, let us look now at the readings we have just heard.

The epistle introduces the very notion of Tradition. Tradidi quod et accepi: “I deliver to you what I also received” St Paul said. What Paul received and is now delivering is the Gospel he is preaching. What is the very nucleus of this Gospel? This is the Paschal Mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ our Lord. The very nucleus of the apostolic faith can be written down on a bus ticket: first Christ died for our sins; then he rose again from the dead, showing himself alive to his astonished disciples.

This is the everlasting truth of the Gospel: God loves us and his love is not only compassionate, it is also efficient: it delivers us from death, both spiritual and bodily. Nobody, even the greatest theologian, can add anything to this. In the course of the centuries one can only but explore this treasure, defend it and explain it. Evangelical truth is not ahead but behind us. We have not to look continuously to new revelations about God but always to come back to the well-spring of our faith. Ressourcement is the condition of the growth of our own faith and of our own testimony. Until the end of the world the Church has to display the manifold richness of this single event: the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Like the facets of a diamond this unique event doesn't cease to throw out new lights, lights accorded to the times and to the expectations of each one. Faith grows throughout the centuries like a tree from the very seed which is the Paschal Mystery witnessed by the apostles and transmitted by them to the bishops their successors. This is what John Henry cardinal Newman called “the organic development of the dogma”

I can now conclude this first part by saying that, contrary to what protestants argue, the Catholic Church doesn't add anything to the Scriptures. I can even affirm that Christian Scriptures are the crystallisation of the very substance of Tradition. Christian Scriptures were written down from the Apostolic Tradition and convey what is essential in it: the most important words and deeds of our Lord.

The second reading, drawn from the Gospel according to St Mark, underlines the meaning and the efficiency of the Paschal Mystery through a narrative of healing. The man healed by the Lord is deaf and mute; he is living in Decapolis, that is in a pagan country. This man, this is us. He is a true picture of ourselves since the Fall. Since the Fall we are actually alienated from God. We cannot hear his voice calling us to him, we cannot answer him. What Jesus does for this poor man has a symbolical meaning for us. He opens his ears, he releases his tongue. So the man can hear and speak. Through the sacraments of the Church, Jesus does the same for us: he heals us, he liberates us from the bonds inherited by original sin. For we are spiritually deaf, he opens the ears of our heart. So we can perceive God's truth, which is also the truth about man – as said so often Pope John Paul – because it comes through the God incarnate, Jesus Christ. For we are spiritually mute, he releases our tongue. So we can answer God's call to beatitude by praising him. Jesus restores our spiritual health by restoring our ability to establish relations with him and with each other. Being spiritually deaf and mute, we were spiritually dead. He who can't hear nor speak is precisely he who has no relationship with the world around him. This is the biblical definition of death. He who has relationship neither with God nor with the others is the sinner par excellence, the Devil. He ceases to be a person, in the sense this word has in Trinitarian theology. By restoring our ability to hear and speak, God makes us living persons. He restores the image and likeness of him in us. Even better he makes us images of his beloved Son, he collocates us into the Trinity at the very place occupied by his Son. We become as the Son: first we have to hear the voice of the Father, to receive what he has to say, that is to receive our own self from him alone, exactly as the Son in the Trinity; then we have to speak, that is to surrender our self by our own life, as the Son did.

This spiritual healing operated by Jesus makes us members of his body. Within the Trinity, in the heaven where is our citizenship as St Paul says to the Colossians, we are in Christ, sharing in his Sonship, taking part in his relationship with the Father. This relationship – the communion with the Father and the Son – is nothing else but the Holy Spirit whose nature is to unite. In order to be spiritually alive we have to open all parts of our being to the healing power of Christ through the Holy Spirit. This is how the Paschal Mystery operates its efficiency in us. I conclude this second part by quoting what the Pope said last Sunday: “That is why prayer is so important: daily prayer, private prayer in the quiet of our hearts and before the Blessed Sacrament, and liturgical prayer in the heart of the Church. Prayer is pure receptivity to God's grace, love in action, communion with the Spirit who dwells within us, leading us, through Jesus, in the Church, to our heavenly Father. In the power of his Spirit, Jesus is always present in our hearts, quietly waiting for us to be still with him, to hear his voice, to abide in his love, and to receive "power from on high", enabling us to be salt and light for our world.” Brothers and sisters, let us be healed by the Lord our God. Amen.

Brisbane, July 2008