Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/021912.cfm

A gnarled, living tree
accommodates power lines
and a bus stop sign

Remember not the events of the past,
the things of long ago consider not;
see, I am doing something new!
Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was too violent for my tastes, but I was very grateful for that moment when “Jesus” spoke tenderly to his “mother” and said, “See, I make all things new.” The scene expressed the evangelical joy of the Messiah as he bore his cross, a joy which did not appear elsewhere in the film.

Isaiah prophesied that joy hundreds of years before the Christ was born. It is a joy like that of a woman who forgets the pain of labor with the joy of a newborn child. It is an elation which remembers not the events of the past .

Isaiah found a despondent, bewildered people as he ministered to the exiled Jews in Babylon. They had suffered more grief than most of us can imagine: the murder, mutilation and rape of loved ones, the destruction of their homes, livelihood and city; deportation from their homeland; the long trek to Babylon, and subjection to a foreign, pagan regime. They were under imperial orders to “forget your people and your father’s house.” They had survived so far only because they had skills useful to their captors, or so it seemed.

Isaiah would assure them, “We have survived because God loves us.”

He reached down from on high and seized me;

drew me out of the deep waters.

He rescued me from my mighty enemy,

from foes too powerful for me.

They attacked me on my day of distress,

but the LORD was my support.

He set me free in the open;

he rescued me because he loves me. (Psalm 18: 17-20)

In today’s gospel, Saint Mark celebrates that unexpected, inexplicable joy that has appeared in Jesus. They hardly know what to make of him as he heals a paralyzed man and forgives his sins. The Pharisees objected to Jesus declaration. “Who can forgive sins but God?”  they said. They instinctively objected to his statement because their hope of seeing anything new had died a long time ago.

But when he went ahead and healed the man they were awestruck. Their objections fell away like the leaves from a tree in a late autumn gale. They could not think, so great was their astonishment.

They were all astounded and glorified God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this."

With the dawn of this Third Millennium we have become inured to new things. Innovation is a way of life for us, except in the field of religion. Some people cling to the platitudes of the past even as we plunge into the future. They expect nothing new from God even as the dominant culture pummels us with its own message, “Forget your people and your father’s house.” 

I often hear that complaint, “I used to go to church but when I go now it's not the same church.” Well of course not! Did you expect your old neighborhood to remain unchanged after you moved away? Did you expect your former employers to keep using typewriters when the world learned to compute? Did you expect us to ignore God’s guidance until you decided to return?

Your ship sailed on after you jumped overboard! We couldn’t turn it around to search for you, on the off-chance you might want to be found. To reenter the Church you’ll have to catch up with us and be swept along with us in the gales of God's mercy. You will learn to see things as you never saw them before. You will taste that wisdom of which Saint Augustine sings:

“Too late have I loved you, O Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! Too late I loved you! And behold, you were within, and I abroad, and there I searched for you; I was deformed, plunging amid those fair forms, which you had made. You were with me, but I was not with you. Things held me far from you—things which, if they were not in you, were not at all. You called, and shouted, and burst my deafness. You flashed and shone, and scattered my blindness. You breathed odors and I drew in breath—and I pant for you. I tasted, and I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for your peace” (St. Augustine, Confessions).