The Divine Recompense: Sunday Reflection

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This morning’s Gospel reading is Mark 7:31–37:

Again Jesus left the district of Tyre and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, into the district of the Decapolis. And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him off by himself away from the crowd. He put his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, “Ephphatha!”—that is, “Be opened!”— And immediately the man’s ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly. He ordered them not to tell anyone. But the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it. They were exceedingly astonished and they said, “He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” 

Let’s start out with a confession today. I have become a fan of law-enforcement reality shows, and I have begun to wonder exactly how that happened. As a rule, I’m not a fan of the reality-TV genre, except perhaps in remodeling shows on HGTV. I’ve begun asking myself this question: Besides curiosity about how police really operate in our communities, what’s the attraction? 

In mulling over today’s readings, I believe that the answer lies within our competing yearnings for justice and mercy. On one hand, we want to see the wicked punished; on the other hand, if we’re honest, we realize that wickedness exists within us too. Too often, though, we want justice for thee and mercy for we. 

Those yearnings are at the heart of our readings today, and at the heart of Jesus’ miraculous healings as well. Before we get there, though, we should recall that Jesus addresses this more directly in many episodes from the Gospel. He rebukes the Pharisees and scribes who use the law to punish rather than teach and protect; in Matthew 7:35, He warns us to tend to the log in our own eyes before worrying about the speck in others’. Over and over, Jesus teaches that the Law was meant as a way for humanity to prosper in the love of the Lord, and not as an end unto itself or as a tool to enhance one’s status at the expense of others.

The Law is both justice and mercy, Jesus teaches. But the Law is from the Lord, and the law (lower case) is too often something else, especially in our own hearts. Our longings for mercy and justice simultaneously cannot be satisfied entirely through our own machinations, as millennia of experience has proven. We grow weary with fear and despair of seeing either in this world, but the Lord promises both for those who remain faithful to Him. 

In our first reading from Isaiah, the Lord declares that He will provide “divine recompense” and vindication for their hope and faith:

Be strong, fear not! Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing. Streams will burst forth in the desert, and rivers in the steppe. The burning sands will become pools, and the thirsty ground, springs of water.

This passage is meant literally as well as spiritually. Isaiah’s prophecy also provided the signs necessary to see Jesus as the Messiah, through His healing miracles. Jesus performed all of these miracles in relation to the afflicted in the region. Today’s Gospel tells the story of how Jesus healed a deaf-mute, but we have others of the blind being made to see and the lame and paralyzed restored to full health and motion. Jesus also raised the dead with Lazarus and the near-dead on several occasions, including the servant child of the centurion, whose response to this miracle we repeat at every Mass. 

The healings are literal history and should be read as such. However, they have a powerful allegorical meaning as well, which we may not always recognize but the passage from Isaiah underscores. Who are the blind? Who are the deaf and mute? Who are the lame?

We are. All of us have been rendered senseless to the Lord through original sin and constant rebellion through sin. We seek justice and mercy, but cannot reconcile them ourselves because of this blindness, deafness, and disability. We seek what we refuse to embrace because of that rejection, and remain cut off from the Lord who wishes to provide both in abundance. 

Why? Because while we all yearn for God’s love, we’d mainly prefer to remain in charge ourselves, even though we cannot create what we desire most. The more we prosper in the world as it is, the further we move away from the Lord, as that success eventually blunts our desire for justice and mercy beyond ourselves. Jesus came into this world to rescue us from the senselessness of sin, the deadening of our ability to love the Lord, and to force us to see, hear, and feel the world as it is, in order to reconnect us to salvation. 

Not all of us have been blinded and deafened to the same extent, of course. In our second reading, James writes in his epistle to remind us of God’s favor among the poor, but His demand for justice and mercy without designation:

My brothers and sisters, show no partiality as you adhere to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. For if a man with gold rings and fine clothes comes into your assembly, and a poor person in shabby clothes also comes in, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Sit here, please,” while you say to the poor one, “Stand there,” or “Sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil designs?

Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Did not God choose those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he promised to those who love him?

Does the Lord favor the poor? All of the scriptures emphasize that, and demand that the rest of us do the same. But why do the poor and infirm find God’s favor? Is it because they have to trust in God and have faith in His justice? Their weakness forces them to rely on Him, snd to recognize through that faith that true justice and mercy come from Him and not from fallen humanity. 

In that sense, the poor are the least blinded and deafened by sin, original or otherwise. They have the sight, hearing, and strength to trust in the Lord rather than worldly goods. The widow, the orphan, and the infirm have little access to material wealth or power, and thus see the world more clearly as it is and come to rely on Him and those who serve Him. 

This is the message behind Jesus’ healings. In the literal sense, He came to restore sight, hearing, sanity, and physical life to the individuals who received it. But in the much broader spiritual and analogical sense, Jesus came to restore true sight, true hearing, and true life to us all. Why? Because we are all poor in these matters before the Lord, only we have become too lost in this material fallen world to recognize it in ourselves. 

When we recognize the yearnings and listen carefully to the scriptures, we become naturally drawn to justice and mercy. But we should be careful to choose the Lord and trust in Him for those qualities, especially in resolving whatever contradictions we see between them. Only through Christ will we see that justice and mercy are one, and only by trusting in Jesus as our savior will we be able to have our eyes and ears fully opened to our poverty — and our blessings. That is the divine recompense that the Lord wishes to give freely from His love for us, if we will only see it for ourselves and hear His voice leading us to it. 

Previous reflections on these readings:

The front page image is “Healing of a Deaf-Mute,” an illuminated page in the Ottheinreich Bible by an unknown artist, c.1425-30. In the collection of the Bavarian State Library. Via Wikimedia Commons.

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.