This was my homily for today followed by the gospel passage.
Last Thursday as I was coming back from Sligo, I went in to the Drumcliffe graveyard to visit the resting place of William Butler Yeats. It is a bit on the north side of Sligo. Seeking Our Lady’s intercession, I said a MEMORARE for the repose of his soul. WB Yeats is one of Ireland’s greatest writers and indeed one of world ranking. He died in 1939 to give a sense of his place in history.
What many people – including myself – find fascinating about Yeats is his epitaph, the statement written on his headstone: CAST A COLD EYE ON LIFE, ON DEATH. HORSEMAN PASS BY.
Now Yeats was a man of great depth and we could spend all day and all night working out what this means or might mean! But if we take it at face value, it speaks to me at least of NIHILISM, that our lives have no lasting meaning or value. If we were travelling down a road and saw a bit of litter on the side, we would cast a cold eye on it and pass by. It would be unworthy of investigation or spending any time on it.
This understanding of our lives makes perfect sense if death is the BIG END of our human existence. A few years after we die, we are swallowed up by eternal oblivion. Even for somebody as famous as Yeats, a time will come too when he will not be remembered.
Modern day sociologists tell us that current high rates of depression, despair and mental health problems in general are linked to the perceived lack of meaning in life – this is especially true among the younger generation. If affluence brought true happiness and fulfilment, then we should all be the happiest people ever!
If we are to be saved from death and eternal oblivion, we absolutely need a saviour. We cannot do it on our own.
In order to see the context and bigger picture of Jesus and his Gospel Good News, we need to know that before his coming, the Jewish people had been awaiting such a saviour for about 1000 years. This goes back to the prophesies made by Nathan to King David in about 1000BC (2 Samuel 7:4-17). In today’s first reading from Isaiah, we have one expression of this expectation that is dated to about 700BC.
Say to all faint hearts,
‘Courage! Do not be afraid.
‘Look, your God is coming…
he is coming to save you.’
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
the ears of the deaf unsealed,
then the lame shall leap like a deer
and the tongues of the dumb sing for joy.
The first generation of Christians who knew Jesus – his disciples who lived with him throughout the 3 years of his public ministry – became convinced that he was the fulfilment of Israel’s long awaited saviour. This was the beginning of the Catholic Church, the beginning of Christianity. We here in Ardaghey in 2018 are the inheritors of this Faith that goes back to the Holy Land of the early 30’s of the first century AD.
The main reason that Jesus’ followers became convinced that he was the Saviour was because of his Resurrection from the dead. St Paul in first Corinthians 15 says that hundreds of people witnessed Jesus after he came back from the dead. This was as real for them as it was real for all of us that Pope Francis visited Ireland recently. All of us saw the Pope on TV and some actually saw him at Knock and Dublin.
It was in fact MORE REAL for the first Christians that Jesus had come back from the dead. He spoke to many people personally; he cooked breakfast for the disciples on the shore of Lake Galilee; he ate food in their presence to prove that he was not a ghost; people actually touched him: St Thomas put his fingers into the wounds of the crucifixion. All the Apostles apart from St John died as martyrs telling everybody about this.
Another reason why they were convinced that he was the Saviour was the many miracles that he worked. A prime example is today’s healing of the man who was deaf and dumb. This fulfils the exactly the prophesy of Isaiah that we heard in the first reading.
When we believe in Jesus, it gives us a whole other vision of life. On our headstones and those of our loved ones, we don’t write a statement indicating the BIG END of our lives. Instead we write something like REST IN PEACE. The person who has died has gone to God and we hope that they are safe in the care of the Good Shepherd who has conquered sin and death.
In summary: It isn’t just GOOD NEWS but in fact THE GREATEST NEWS that Jesus has conquered death for those who believe in him.
GOSPEL
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark 7:31-37
He makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.
Returning from the district of Tyre, Jesus went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, right through the Decapolis region. And they brought him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they asked him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, put his fingers into the man’s ears and touched his tongue with spittle. Then looking up to heaven he sighed; and he said to him, ‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.’ And his ears were opened, and the ligament of his tongue was loosened and he spoke clearly. And Jesus ordered them to tell no one about it, but the more he insisted, the more widely they published it. Their admiration was unbounded. ‘He has done all things well,’ they said, ‘he makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.’
The Gospel of the Lord.
Fr Morty O'Shea 