Homily for the Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 5, 2021
St. Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
Isaiah 35:4-7a
Psalm 146:6-7, 8-9, 9-10
James 2:1-5
Mark 7:31-37
Today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark recounts for us how, somewhere in the vicinity of the Greek cities in Syria known as the Decapolis, or Ten Cities, Jesus heals a deaf man who because of his inability to hear had not learned to speak properly. Curiously, the route that Mark tells us Jesus took to get to the Decapolis is not geographically possible. Also curious is the way that Jesus healed this man. His actions, putting fingers in the man’s ears, spitting, touching the man’s tongue and looking at the sky and groaning, are typical of Greek and Jewish healers, but not the usual way Jesus healed. People watching Jesus do this would have seen nothing out of the ordinary, but we know that it was a miracle.
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