Dare the impossible!

Year B - Sunday 23

Readings: Isaiah 35: 4-7a; James 2: 1-5; Mark 7:31-37

Civilization instils a deep-rooted fear into our hearts: the fear of opposing it, of denouncing it, of abandoning it, of transforming it, of rebelling against its dictates. Once this fear is overcome we will experience something which is almost literally out of this world. To express such an experience, Isaiah announces a series of impossible things: the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame leap, the dumb sing, etc. Of course he does not mean these literally. They are a clarion call to believe in what might be deemed as impossible.

In the second reading James upholds the belief that God’s dream (in other words, the Kingdom of God) is for us to live in a world which is very different from the one around us; a world of solidarity and egalitarianism.

Jesus is the personification of this dream; the harbinger of the new world. The healing of a deaf and dumb person in pagan Decapolis is a concrete manifestation that his philosophy (or spirituality) brings about the impossible: the building up of a society in which all are included, where fear has no place, and in which all are given our freedom.