We listen to the Scripture for this 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, and the scriptures are all very well connected. Today, the first reading from the prophet talks to a people who are in exile, and it speaks to them that God has not forgotten them, but that God will be bringing about a new day for them, and that new day will be signified by the actions of the one who will restore sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and speech to those who are speechless.

It is again an offering of a message of hope to the people in exile. And when you come to the gospel, you can see how they connect, because Jesus is the one who, in a sense, brings hearing to this deaf man and speech to the one who is speechless. The reason that the readings are put this way often escapes us.

First of all, there is a setting here that is of critical importance. Jesus has come, as it says, to the district of the Decapolis. Well, most of us work off the assumption that Jesus is always engaged with the communities of Israel. But that’s not the case. Matter of fact, in this particular situation, and Mark goes out of his way to make this connection.

In this particular case, Jesus has been up in what today we would refer to as Lebanon. And then he comes down to the Sea of Galilee. But he doesn’t come on this side of Capernaum. He doesn’t come on the Jewish side. He comes on what we would refer to today as Jordan. So that he’s coming to a part of the sea that is connected with what they called the Decapolis, an area of ten cities, ten villages, a Roman settlement.

So in a sense, you see that he is engaged with the world at large. He’s not restricting himself to one little group of people. And that is significant in Mark’s gospel, because Mark writes his gospel out of the context of the Roman people. Matter of fact, it’s thought that he posed the gospel out of Rome. And so he’s writing for a different audience.

And part of what he wants to show that audience is that Jesus is not exclusive to one select group of people, but Jesus is for all. And Mark is making that point because, again, he’s writing to the oil. He’s writing primarily to a Gentile community. And his point is that represents what is the new day. See, because the new day does not belong exclusively to Israel.

The new day belongs to the world, and Jesus is the one who comes to bring that gift of God’s new day, the gift of God’s healing, the gift of God in a sense, pulling creation together in the image of what God created. And he does that as a way of inviting us to recognize that we are part of a worldwide community.

We’re not just here in this particular place at this particular moment, but the fact that we have come here to celebrate together the Eucharist. Well, we have come here to celebrate that together with the world, with all of the communities throughout the world. And perhaps no better example of that right now can be found in Pope Francis celebrating mass earlier today in Papua New Guinea.

In the midst of that community that gathered around him and with him for the celebration. But it’s the same celebration that we’re involved with. It’s the same mass that we’re celebrating. And the fact, the message that comes from all of this is that we as a believing people, as a Catholic, believing people. We make no distinctions. We welcome everyone.

We open the door to all because it is all who are part of God’s family. And it reminds us then, as the second reading from Saint James reminds us, that again, we show opportunity for all. We show openness to all. Because James is basically saying, stop, you’re bad behavior. Stop the behavior that has you showing privilege to some and ignoring others.

That is not. That is not the way we are called. We are called to recognize the beauty of each. We are called to recognize the human dignity of each and every human person, wherever they may be, whatever language they may speak, whatever race they may be, whatever nationality they have. What we see is the human person, and we see the human person with the eyes of God.

And because we see the human person with the eyes of God, we are able to share in the joy, but also to share in the sorrow and the pain. And we see that pain, perhaps more than ever at this particular moment in history. But we seeing it in the places where wars are raging. We’re seeing it in the places where world hunger is causing severe, severe famine.

We see it in the suffering of the people in Georgia this past week.

As a young man again, troubled, went into a school and killed four people, injured nine. Right? We see it in that individual and we see it in those who are affected. We see it in the community. We see it here in our city. Later this week, as on Wednesday, we commemorate very sadly, the events of 911. We see the pain and the suffering that is with us as a result of that.

If you go out tonight, you’ll see the two lights shining into the sky, reminding us of those two beautiful towers that were taken down. But we know that the tragedy of that event is not isolated to 911 because so many, so many affected by what happened that day are still dealing with the debts and the illnesses that have come from that.

And we’re still dealing with the tragedy of a world that refuses to learn how to love one another. That is the pain that we live with. That is the suffering that we carry with us. The suffering of the cross that continues to make of us, like Isaiah tried to make, of those people in their exile, in their suffering, trying to remind us of the hope that we have and how we are to be ambassadors of that hope.

Despite the suffering of the cross, because we always bring the message of the resurrection. We come to celebrate the gift of the resurrection. The gift of the Eucharist. And we come then to bring that gift, not just while we’re sitting here, but to bring that gift outside into the world in which we live, which so desperately needs to experience hope.

The hope that comes from our willingness to take upon ourselves the life of Jesus, to be the one who heals, who heals, the deafness, the brokenness, the tragedy, the suffering. We pray, then, that the Eucharist gives us the strength to be able to do that in our daily lives.