23rd Sunday B: Ephphatha - Be Opened

 

 Michel DeVerteuil 
Textual Comments
We are given the context of today’s story: it took place as Jesus was “returning from the district of Tyre”. He was passing “by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee” and this brought him “right through the Decapolis region”. This reminds us that we must know how to leave our ordinary surroundings so that we can meet people like this man.

13 Sunday B: Talitha Koum: Healing is a Compassionate Ministry

 
Sickness and death have a way of shearing through the veneer of our self-importance and social status. These things touch us at our most vulnerable point. Sickness and death strip us of our illusions and remind us that, no matter how important we are in the eyes of others, we are still human—still very limited and transient citizens here on earth.

6th Sunday B: February 14 - Healing of Leprosy and Other discriminations

Reconciler-in-chief
12th February is the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth and — most historians and scholars consider — our greatest President of America.

20 Sunday A: Jesus and the Canaanite Woman: Faith and Healing

Gospel Text: Matthew 15:21-28

Michel DeVerteuil
General Comments

This Sunday’s gospel passage is in two sections,
– an introduction in verse 21.
– the main story in verses 22-28
To get the significance of verse 21 we must look at the preceding passage which tells of the Pharisees’ continued hostility to Jesus. It was because he was rejected by the religious leaders then that Jesus decided to “leave that place” and “withdraw” to  a foreign environment, “the region of Tyre and Sidon”, ending up experiencing  a radically new dimension to his mission. So often  an experience of rejection leads to new possibilities being opened up. Our “region of Tyre and Sidon” turns out to be a place of new beginnings.

13 Sunday B: Talitha Kum

Sickness and death have a way of shearing through the veneer of our self-importance and social status. These things touch us at our most vulnerable point. Sickness and death strip us of our illusions and remind us that, no matter how important we are in the eyes of others, we are still human—still very limited and transient citizens here on earth.

20 Sunday A - Canaanite Woman: Faith and Healing

Thomas O’Loughlin
Introduction to the Celebration

When we gather each Sunday to celebrate being the People of God, we address Jesus as ‘ our Saviour’. But we often forget that the basic image of ‘saviour’ is that Jesus came to bring healing. We are addressing Jesus as the one we look to for healing, health, and wholeness. This aspect of the ministry of the Christ is brought out in today’s gospel when a woman calls on him as ‘Lord’ and ‘Son of David’ asking him to heal her daughter.

So just like that woman long ago who asked Jesus for healing, during our gathering today we shall keep our need for healing in mind in our prayer.

We all need, in one way or another, healing for our bodies when afflicted with pain, we need healing for our minds when they are distressed or embittered, and we need healing for our spirits which become damaged by sin. To encounter Jesus is to encounter the Father’s gift of wholeness. Let us pray now that we shall share in it through this Eucharist.

23 Sunday - B - Ephphatha

 Introduction

The Rite of Blessing and Sprinkling Holy Water (Missal, p 387) is appropriate because the gospel is that of Jesus restoring hearing and speech to the deaf man with the speech impediment.

A.    Lord, Open Our Ears and Lips 

We live in era of communication explosion: fax, E-mail, internet or web, and so on. And at the same time it is an age of isolation and loneliness of people. What people have is information, and what they have lost is personal relations. In this eucharist we pray to the Lord, to open our ears. that we may again listen to one another and to God speaking to us. May we also learn again to speak to one another, person to person.