Friday of the 5th Week in Ordinary Time/Our Lady of Lourdes
February 11, 2022
Knights of Columbus Board Meeting
St. Augustine, FL
Israel Fails to Hear God’s Voice
Years ago, when I was Bishop of Bridgeport, I travelled to Baltimore for a one-day health assessment at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. It was a comprehensive battery of tests, all in all an exhausting day. When I returned home, my priest secretary asked me how I had done. I told him that the test results were good except that I had some loss of hearing. To which he replied, “I could have told them that!” He meant listening, not hearing.
Today’s Scriptures and our feast day are about hearing and listening. You might not think so, though, if you recall our reading from the 1st Book of Kings. Here we meet up with King Jeroboam and the Prophet Ahijah. The reign of Jeroboam marked the end of a united Israel. No longer did the House of David reign over all its tribes. This tragic turn of events weakened Israel and made it susceptible to its enemies. Why, then, did such a tragedy befall the people whom God cherished so dearly?
The answer is found in the responsorial psalm, Psalm 81: “My people [says the Lord] heard not my voice and Israel obeyed me not; so I have them up to the hardness of their hearts; they walked according to the own counsels.” God goes on to plead with his people, “If only my people would hear me, and Israel walk in my ways, quickly would I humble their enemies, against their foes I would turn my hand.” The people of God had become, in a phrase, “spiritually deaf”.
The Cure of the Deaf Man
Fast forward to the blessed days when Jesus, our Savior, walked the earth. Mark’s Gospel makes clear that Jesus did indeed get around, coming at length to the district of the Ten Cities where he encountered a deaf man with a speech impediment. Notice how Jesus focuses all his attention on this man. H took him away from the crowds; put his finger into the man’s ears; touched his tongue with spittle; looked up to heaven and groaned, praying to the Father with a depth too deep for words. Then he said “Ephphatha!”
That word means, in Hebrew, “Be opened!” – the very word that was addressed to us at our Baptism. In that moment of sacramental grace, our ears were opened to hear the Word of God, and our tongue was loosed to proclaim the Word of God. The root of the word “obey” is actually “to hear”. Every baptized person is called to that holiness which comes from taking the Word of God to heart and acting upon it. Those who do so, proclaim the Word, even when they are not preaching.
Only the grace of the Holy Spirit can open our spiritual eyes and ears. Even so, it is not easy. We resist. We evade. We rationalize. We harden our hearts. Think of St. Augustine’s conversion described in his Confessions where he says to God, “You called, shouted, broke through my deafness; you flared, blazed, banished my blindness; you lavished your fragrance, I gasped and now I pant for you. I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst. you touched me and I burned for your peace.” This is the “cure” you and I should ask of the Lord every day of our lives.
Blessed Michael McGivney wanted nothing more than that his Knights and their families would truly listen to the Word of God as it comes to us through the Church, and obey it. He wanted nothing more than that we would put our faith into action. That is why he gave us the Gospel principles of charity, unity, and fraternity. As leaders of the Knights of Columbus, we undertake a solemn obligation to advance Fr. McGivney’s vision amid the challenges and opportunities of our day.
Our Lady of Lourdes
No one listened more attentively and faithfully to the Word of God than Mary. Preserved from original sin and responsive always to the grace of God, Mary’s heart presented no impediments to God’s saving plans. That is why the Fathers of the Church often say that Mary conceived the Word in her heart before she conceived him in her womb. Mary listened; then she spoke, “let it be done to me according to your word.” Mary listened; then spoke, “The Lord has done great things for me, holy his Name!”
Raised body and soul to the glory of heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary would visit her children many times throughout history. In 1858 she appeared before a poor 14 year-old girl, St. Bernadette Soubirous. Mary uttered these words to her, “I am the Immaculate Conception”. To a world that was closing its ears to God’s Word and speaking falsehoods, Mary presented herself through this young girl as the one whose hearing of the Word of God was wholly unobstructed by sin and pride. Mary said, in effect, ‘if only you would listen to the voice of God, how you deeply you would experience his healing and redeeming love.’
Those of us who have been blessed to go on pilgrimage to Lourdes know this. I think of the Warriors to Lourdes pilgrimage sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, where many of those injured in war – physically, psychologically, and spiritually – find healing, renewed strength, peace of mind and heart. Our Lady is still there, extending to them the Lord’s healing touch, opening their minds and hearts to the Word of God perhaps as never before. In my visits to Lourdes, I have personally felt the power of Mary’s presence and found myself entrusting to her loving care all the many things that obstruct my hearing of God’s Word and my proclamation of it.
“O Mary Conceived without Sin”
Today, let us ask the loving intercession of the Mary, “conceived without sin”— that we may hear the Word of God, and not only keep it, but proclaim it! “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!” Blessed Michael McGivney, pray for us! Vivat Jesus!