Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Basilica of Our Lady of Consolation
Carey, Ohio

 Lectionary: 128

Be strong, fear not!
Here is your God,
he comes with vindication;
with divine recompense
he comes to save you.

As the nations of Judah and Israel aged and its leaders became wealthier and more corrupt, the backward-gazing religion of Abraham, Moses, and David became the forward-looking religion of Isaiah the prophet. His prophetic visions, warnings, and promises became a living document, open to contributors of several generations for almost two hundred years. It was like an open sourced website with several writers whose works were inspired, collected, and edited under the guidance of God’s prophetic spirit. When both nations collapsed under the weight of invading armies, these writers kept the faith of their ancestors. They took their Book of Isaiah with them as an invading army transplanted them from destroyed Jerusalem to pagan Babylon. Isaiah had become a sacred, cultic project. Despite their exile, grief, and hardship, they could not, and would not, forget the Lord who assured them:         See, the earlier things have come to pass,         new ones I now declare;         Before they spring forth         I announce them to you. Is 42:9 Seventy years later, the heirs of these scholars were among the remnant who returned to the ruins on Mount Zion to rebuild Jerusalem and its temple. They could not restore the kingdom of David but they believed in, and hoped for, a future when God would gather all nations into a single empire with Jerusalem as its capital and a Son of David as its king. That new thing would come just as surely as God had delivered the children of Abraham out of Egypt, from slavery to freedom, more than a thousand years before. The Spirit of God – the Spirit of Isaiah – would not let them forget God’s wonderful works, nor could they dismiss his promises for the future. We hear of these wonderful, coming works in today’s first reading from Isaiah:         Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,         the ears of the deaf be cleared;         then will the lame leap like a stag,         then the tongue of the mute will sing. But God’s healing will not stop with disabled people; it must include the distressed earth, air, and water. As he said,         Streams will burst forth in the desert,         and rivers in the steppe.         The burning sands will become pools,         and the thirsty ground, springs of water. On That Day the nations of the world will recognize the God-like dignity of every man, woman, and child. Governed by a Royal Son of David, they will practice a sacred stewardship of the Earth, as their harvests and livestock feed everyone. There will be no need to hoard, and no one will want to hoard. The Earth itself will rejoice as the mountains and the hills burst into song, and all the trees of the field clap their hands. The Gospels, written several centuries after the open sourced book of Isaiah was closed, recognized the fulfillment of Isaiah’s hopes and visions in Jesus. He came to open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf; he loosened the tongues of the mute who sang God’s praises while the lame danced for joy. Even the stormy seas were calmed at his command, and the earth trembled under his feet when he rose from the dead. Everything Isaiah had hoped for was coming to pass. Before we skip to the present, we should remember that the Lord has remained with his church through all the ages as decades passed into centuries, empires rose and fell, heretical sects appeared and disappeared. We’re still here, we remember, we forget nothing – neither God’s mighty works, nor the scandal of our sins, nor the courage of our saints and martyrs; and we have the records to prove it. The Church remains faithful not because we are courageous or stubborn, but because the Lord keeps faith with us. What remains for us, as we wait for the fulness of what has already begun, is to imitate our Lord, as in today's second reading. The Apostles James urges us:

My brothers and sisters, show no partiality
as you adhere to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.

Saint Paul said of Jesus, “He cannot deny himself.” That Church and those people flourish who do not deny themselves, their principles, or their mission. We cannot deny ourselves by showing partiality to any race, nationality, or ethnicity. We cannot prefer the wealthy over the middle class or poor, employed over unemployed, the young over the old, or the able over the disabled. Which is to say, "We keep faith." We practice mercy and do justice. It’s not easy; it’s not supposed to be easy. But, as Saint Paul said, we "run so as to win” because we know we can still lose everything. This generous, willing spirit comes naturally only to those who practice their faith as intensely as any Olympic gymnast practices vaults, pikes, and landings. And his spirit can be lost in the twinkling of an eye. We do not forget the warning of Psalm 95 as we hear God speak to us and say:

Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day of Massah in the desert.
There your ancestors tested me; they tried me though they had seen my works.
Forty years I loathed that generation; I said: “This people’s heart goes astray; they do not know my ways.” Therefore I swore in my anger: “They shall never enter my rest.”

Therefore, let us strive to enter into that rest, so that no one may fall after the same example of disobedience. Hebrews 4:11

I entered Mt St Francis Seminary on this day in 1962. I'm still here. How about that!