Twenty-third Sunday of the Year

The Scripture readings we listen to at Mass Sunday after Sunday are intended to nourish our lives of faith. The Holy Spirit prompted and inspired the writers of the bible to set before us God’s truth. Gathered at Mass, it is God himself who speaks his word to encourage us on our journey of faith, hope and charity. What we are required to bring is an attentive ear and a receptive mind, for the word of God is ever alive and active, giving us fresh insight into the divine plan each time we hear it.
In our first reading today the prophet Isaiah stirs up the people’s hope. Almighty God never belongs to the past or fails to take an interest in his people’s welfare. Irrespective of outward appearances he is ever active, true to his promises. The prophet speaks of the wonderful deed God has in mind, a deed so marvellous that the blind, deaf and lame will recover their full faculties when they witness it. This prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled in a most remarkable way in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ on earth, as today’s gospel story so clearly illustrates. All the promises of salvation God made in the Old Testament find their fulfilment in the Son of God.
The healing miracles of the Lord Jesus are a sign of a greater and more important healing which he came to bring the human race. Christ offers spiritual healing. He releases us from the power of sin and evil which can so beset us and the world at large. Through his own struggle with evil and temptation in his passion and death on the cross he broke the chains and stranglehold of the evil one. Now risen in triumph by the power of the Father he shares the new life of the resurrection with all who approach him in faith. Christ can deal with the metaphorical blindness, deafness and lameness that we all suffer from, if we would only acknowledge our condition. Present to us in our liturgy, he continues to make the deaf hear and the dumb speak. When the seed of Christ’s message takes root and bears fruit in our hearts, then we can live out the challenge that the apostle James so forthrightly sets before us in our second reading. In Christ we will see and hear the world differently, especially the revealed truth that we must not make distinctions between persons, because every single human being is created in the image of God. For each one of them the Son of God laid down his life.

+Michael Campbell OSA
Bishop of Lancaster

(from the Diocesan website)