Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary
Time
On a hot summer day along
the shore in New Jersey there was a whole large crowd of people that had
gathered at a beach. And they were just
out there enjoying the sun and the water.
There was a particular lady who had walked onto a sandbar that kind of
stretched out into the ocean for quite a distance. And she kind of got lost in the cool
sensation of the water and the movement of the waves and as she is kind of
walking around out there she lost track of where she was and she stepped off of
the sandbar and plummeted down into deeper water. Well there happened to be a riptide down
there and that riptide started to pull her under and she began to struggle to
try to get free of it. All the people on
the shore were kind of sitting there in shock watching this poor lady
struggle. But finally one young man came
charging across the beach, dove into the water and swam out to the woman,
grabbed her and pulled her back safely to shore.
A little bit later the Beach
Patrol police arrived. And one of the
onlookers went up to one of the officers and said, “You know, I can’t believe
it. What was wrong with all those people? They didn’t even care. They just stood there and watched as that
lady was drowning. Ah, but that one
young man. I can’t believe how wonderful
of a person he must be.” And the officer
looked at him and he says, “Well you know, sometimes when we look at life it’s
very easy to divide people into those who care and to those who don’t
care.” But he said, “Be careful how you
judge, because it takes a lot of courage to care greatly.”
Our readings today present
us with a picture of a God who cares. A
God who notices the hurts and the aches and the pains of our life and He cares
greatly.
In the first reading we had
a prophesy where Israel is torn apart by the fact that so many of the people
have been dispersed across the face of the earth because of a succession of
wars. And the captors would come in and
take the people and spread them out in order to keep them from coming together
and fighting again. And so they were
lost out there in the aspira as they called it.
Well God prophesied that He will bring them all back to Jerusalem. That He will heal their pain and their hurt
and give them a new life. God wasn’t
lost in all of that pain, He cared greatly and He was going to make sure that
that pain did not have the last word.
In the gospel reading we see
Jesus is walking down a road and there’s a blind man there. Now everybody else could care less about that
blind man. They kept telling him to shut
his mouth. They didn’t want him calling
out and bothering Jesus. But as soon as
Jesus hears him calling, Jesus was a man of great caring, of great love. He noticed what was happening in the lives of
those around Him. And so He called the
blind man to Himself and He heals him.
And He says to him, “Go on your way.”
But this is very interesting
because at that point the man realizes something very important about himself. To go his own way does not mean that he walks
off and lives a life like he did before.
Now he has had an example in Jesus and he follows Jesus along the way. The way was the name that the early church
had for those who followed Jesus. That
was the name for Christianity. So this
man now is healed and he doesn’t go about his life as normal. He knows that he has to follow Jesus along
the way. The church. He has to live as a follower of Jesus
imitating the kindness and the care and the mercy and the compassion that make
up the life of Jesus.
And what does this way of
Jesus look like? Well we as Catholics
believe that all we have to do is simply look to the scriptures and especially
to the life of our mother Mary. Because
in Mary we have a picture of what a true disciple, a true follower of her Son
should look like.
You know as we first meet
Mary in the gospel she is a young girl.
She’s about 13 or 14-years-old.
And the angel comes to her. And
the angel says to her, “God want’s you to be the mother of the Messiah.” Now you have to place yourself in Mary’s
shoes there. Yes, Mary knew that the
people were in need of this Savior and her heart went out to them. But at the same time Mary had to realize that
if she said yes it was going to cause a lot of pain. Because she was not married. She was going to be an unmarried pregnant
woman and in that society those women were so persecuted and looked down upon. She knew that she would be a shame to her
whole family. She would hurt her parents
terrifically. She knew that she was
going to have to live a life of suffering.
But Mary’s love for others led her to forget about herself and she says,
“Yes” for their sake.
The next time we meet Mary
it is a totally different yet similar type of thing. We next meet her at the Cana wedding. And she is watching the bride and the groom
and she sees that they have run out of wine.
Well one of the worst sins that you could commit in that society was to
fail in hospitality. It would have been
a huge disgrace for that bride and bridegroom if the wine was not there to
serve these people. And so Mary of
course notices this, she immediately runs to her Son and begs Him to make a
difference. And Jesus does. It’s Mary’s caring for the people around her
that shines forth once again in that story.
As we move on down through
the gospels we have another terrific scene.
Jesus is carrying His cross to die and along the way who does He run
into but His mother Mary. And the gospels
don’t make a big deal out of this but I think we really need to look at that
and think about it. Mary, to see her Son
suffering as much as He was, that had to have hurt her as much as it would hurt
any other mother to watch their children suffer. And yet Mary intentionally went out to meet
Him along that road leading to Calvary knowing that it was just going to tear
her heart to pieces. But she also knew
that her Son needed to see her. He
needed to know that she was with Him. He
needed to know that she loved him and that she was there to give Him strength.
So once again Mary in her
tremendous care for Jesus goes out and is that source of strength that allows
Him to continue that mission His Father had given Him.
A little bit later in the
gospels Mary comes in once again. This
time the apostles are gathered in the upper room after Jesus’ death. And they are terrified. They are so afraid that the authorities who
put Jesus to death are going to come after them next. And so they barred themselves in and they are
hiding and they’re cowering in shame and in fear. Except we are told that Mary is there with
them, and she is praying with them.
Once again we see the
compassion and the care of Mary. She
notices these best friends of her Son.
And she knows that they are sorrowing and that they are hurting and even
though she is hurting herself, obviously, she still care enough to go to them
and to be with them, and to pray with them and to try to encourage them and to
give her love to them as a source of strength.
That’s what it means to
follow the way of Jesus. To live a life
where we care about our brothers and sisters.
A life where we are not so wrapped up in ourselves that we fail to see
the hurt and the needs and the difficulties that others are going through. A life of compassion where we’re willing to
go out and to do whatever we can to make their life a little better. Mary is the example par excellence of what it
means to be a Christian.
And as we celebrate this
month of October, which has always been a month especially dedicated to Mary I
think our readings today call us to take an opportunity to really look at her,
to try to understand the pictures of her that we get as we read through the
scriptures. To understand what it is
that her Son is asking of us and to pray that she will be with us.
You know this coming Tuesday
we will be having one of our Marian Days here in the parish. And it’s a wonderful way for those of you who
are available after the 8:30 Mass, actually right before the 8:30 Mass. We pray the Rosary at 8:00, Mass at 8:30 and
then we gather together in celebration for a little breakfast gathering. All the Redemptorists are over there plus the
people, we gather in there in honor of Mary.
What a wonderful way to celebrate Mary and the role of example that she
plays in our life. So we invite all of
you who can possibly come on Tuesday to come on over there and to join us in
that time of prayer.
But it is also important
today that we come here and we draw near this altar to be fed once again. Because what that police officer in New
Jersey said is very true, “It takes great courage to care for others.” We need to be fed today with Jesus, with His
body, with His blood, with His love, with His compassion. Because it is only when we come to Him that
we ourselves will be filled. The other
side of that story of Mary meeting Jesus along the road to Calvary, not only
was she a source of strength to Him, but He became one to her. She instinctively ran to her Son when she
felt weakness, when she felt a need in her life, just like Bartameus runs to
Jesus when he has that need in his life.
And so it should be for us. We
need to run here to the table of the Lord to be fed, to be enriched with His
love so that we can be a little bit braver in our life, and a just a little bit
more caring for one another.