Denver, Colorado – Night Sky

Father Gregory Havill offered this homily at the Mass of the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, September 8 2024. In his personal archives, it is listed as “Homily 91.” Fr. Gregory follows a practice of including at the beginning of the texts of his homilies images that offer visual inspiration for his ideas. For this homily, he included the image above of the night sky in Denver, Colorado. Texts for the sermon were Isiah 35:4-7; James 2:1-5; and Mark 7:31-37.

Today’s Gospel relates the healing of a deaf-mute by Jesus. For him, this miraculous cure clearly has to do with more than correcting a physical disability. Jesus intends for it to be a sort of parable or symbol, for the people of Israel who, in turn, represent all of mankind. As the prophets had said so often, Israel seems deaf when it comes to the Word of God. Because of this, it is mute, incapable of giving a valid response. Like the prophets of old, Jesus had no illusions. He knew how very few of those who witnessed his miracles guessed that there was any underlying purpose which might hint at any deeper meaning. As the prophets predicted, in the new kingdom, the people of Israel, would be transformed by God. But the grain of agreement was given by only a very few, and even then, imperfectly. During the eighteen months of his teaching mission in Galilee, Jesus often worked miracles. He didn’t make a spectacle of them because he intended that his mission should be unfolded progressively. So, in today’s case, he takes the sick man aside, seeking the middle line between entirely avoiding publicity and giving the people a sign. It was enough for him to feel that the hope of the deaf-mute was genuine, to discern the smallest seed of faith, the tiniest assent; for this he would manifest his power to serve the humblest of causes.

Sensing the nascent faith of the deaf man, Jesus, touching both ears and tongue, looked upward look toward the Father, who was acting through him. Filled with the Holy Spirit, he sighed deeply. This Trinitarian fullness indicates that his words – “Ephphatha! Be opened!” – caused not only physical healing, but conveyed an effective grace for Israel and for all mankind as well. The power manifested in Christ’s miracles, also had a direct Messianic intention: it revealed, through mortal flesh, the living and Triune God. What is hidden makes us aware of the visible, and then the visible directs us back toward the hidden. Responding to the miraculous healing, witnesses exclaimed: “He’s done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” These words are strikingly similar to the words of Isaiah in the first reading, spoken by the prophet 700 years earlier, during his ministry in Jerusalem: “The ears of the deaf are opened again, the tongue of the dumb breaks forth in song.” St. Justin, showing the Jew Tryphon that this prophecy found fulfillment in Christ, pointed out: “Christ is the stream of living water that flows from God; he sprang up in the desert wastes of ignorance of God; that is, in the parched earth of all the nations. He, who was born among your people, cured those who were blind and deaf from birth, by his word alone. They heard and spoke once more. These miracles prompted men to see him as who he truly is.”(1)

Fr. Gregory with Blake Billings ’77 and Tom Lonergan ’71 at Humanitas Symposium 2022

​Streams opening up in the desert and rivers in parched earth show that physical restoration signifies more than merely the acts of a healer. They indicate a transformation of all of nature, effected by the approach of the judging and redeeming God. By his miracles Jesus demonstrated that the moment of our true redemption, the kingdom foreseen from afar by the prophets, had come to pass.(2) In the Book of Revelation, God himself speaks but once, when he says, “The old order has passed away, behold, I make all things new.”(3) God affirms that he is creating a new world, in which mankind is being transformed into new creatures meant to share in his divine life. Accordingly, St. Gregory of Nyssa declares: “The kingdom of life has begun. Another generation, another life, another way of loving has made its appearance. Our very nature is being transformed into a generation that results not from human effort, but from God. The new creature is begotten by the regeneration of Baptism. Its final destiny is not death, but eternal and joyful life in the dwelling place of the saints” (4).

The second reading, from the letter of St. James, adds an important new theme. For Isaiah, the “blind, deaf, lame and mute” were the ones especially gifted with the Lord’s grace. But St. James refers to them more generally as the “poor” whom God has chosen in the world to be rich in faith and “heirs of the Kingdom.” “God’s poor” of the Old Testament were seen by Jesus as particularly open to the Lord for belief and reliance on him alone.(5) And the author of the letter tells us in no uncertain terms that God’s law will not tolerate their oppression in any way.(6) As he describes them, they are poor in a double sense: because they are despised by the wealthy and because they are humiliated, ever being shunted out of the way. Behavior of this type is so seriously sinful that, it amounts to “blaspheming that honorable name (Christian) by which you are called”(7) – blasphemy by scandalous acts rather than by words. What the world does and, sadly, as St. James says, Christians often do as well: deferring to the rich and disdaining the poor. This contradicts not only the explicit words of Christ but even contradicts the entire divinely established world order of the Old Testament.

In 2022 procession ( l to r: Br. Benedict Maria, Mick and Tommy O’Hara, Br. Joseph Byron, Fr. Gregory Havill)

​As Christians, we are to consider the poor within a radically different paradigm. Instead of distancing ourselves, we identify with them, first by humbly acknowledging before God our own poverty. Streams open up and gardens flourish precisely in the wilderness of impoverished natures. By humbly admitting that we, ourselves, in fact, are the poorest of the poor, “the dry, weary land without water”(8), we open ourselves to the gift of faith. We begin to hear God speaking to us through the words and lives of holy men and women around us, as well as those who have gone before us – those who have listened to him and for whom he has become an actual experience, witnesses to his truth. We learn, in our humility, to speak our very human “Yes” by which we receive in return his perfect “Yes”: “Ephphatha! Be opened!” It is only through this door that the Holy Spirit enters the world.

As the Psalmist sings: “My sacrifice to God a broken spirit: a broken and humbled heart, O God you will not spurn.”(9) In the miracle of the deaf and dumb man, we are given a picture of the way that God acts in our souls. For us to believe, he opens our hearts, enabling us to hear, and if we will, we may listen to his word. If we do, then, like the Apostles, we too can speak, proclaiming the magnalia Dei, the mighty works of God.(10) In the Church’s liturgy, the Holy Spirit is compared to the finger of the right hand of God the Father, Digitus paternae dexterae.(11) He, the Consoler, produces in our souls, in the supernatural order, effects comparable to those which Christ produced in the deaf mute, as he placed his fingers into the man’s ears and touched his tongue.

God does not reckon his gifts by measure. His signature in creation is superabundance, profusion, extravagance. Christ, present to us in the Eucharist, is the infinite self-expenditure of God whose love for us is without limit. God, in an incredible outpouring of himself, expends not only a vast universe but his own self as pure gift in order to lead us to salvation; we, who are “merely a breath, whose days are like a passing shadow.”(12) Yet, in a few minutes [at the Mass] we will receive that very gift. In Holy Communion the grace of God is given to us in such a way that the flesh and blood of our Lord passes into our spirit and our flesh, so that when the Father sees us he sees us enlivened by the grace of his Son. Whoever sees us should see the Lord in us. Actually, it shouldn’t be seen that we’ve received the Lord, but that we are ones who have been received by the Lord. That would correspond more fully to the truth. We become him in us; we become children of God. We were poor and have become rich. We are like people who receive a vast fortune, a treasure of love so immeasurable that we cannot possibly grasp it or hold on to it. The fortune we possess is of such a kind that it exists only to be distributed again. It is the love of God himself, and we see that this love wants nothing for itself – it consists solely in giving. United to the generosity of the Lord, we become unsparing in giving ourselves, to any who have not yet received him, to the poor in other words. This means that each of us is aware that we live first and foremost as beneficiaries of a bounty in which righteousness can only consist of being a donor, like the poor man who, in gratitude for what he receives, passes all he can of it on to another – and then finds to his astonishment that the more profuse his self-gift, the more boundless his abundance.

It is good for us to remember that the conversion of the ancient world to Christianity was not the result of any planned activity on the part of the Church. It was the result of faith as it became visible in the lives of Christian witnesses, and of the community of the Church. The missionary strength of the early Church consisted of very little else. Our urgent responsibility today as Catholics is to be such witnesses, reference points of spiritual belief, people who know and bear God and who openly and joyfully demonstrate in our lives our faith as lived truth.

Notes: 1) Dialogues cum Tryphon, 69,6; 2) cf. Mt 11:2-6; 3) Rev 21:1-5; 4) Oratio I in Christi resurrectionem; 5) Lk 6:20; 6) v. 9; 7) v.7; 8) Ps 63:2; 9) Psalm 51 (50); 10) cf. Acts 2:11; 11) cf. the hymn Veni Creator; 12) Psalm 144:4

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Father Gregory Havill joined the monastic community as a “late vocation”, after establishing himself for many years as a professional artist and professor. He continued to teach art at the School, and although retired from teaching. He continues to serve as the Chaplain for the School.