Secrecy (2012-09-09)

This is my homily for 9 September   2012 (Sunday). I am a Catholic chaplain in Teaneck at Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) campus and for the FDU Newman Catholic Association. We celebrate Catholic Mass - during Fall and Spring semester - every Sunday Evening (7:00 p.m.) at the FDU University Interfaith Chapel, 842 River Road, Teaneck, NJ.

9 September 2012  -  22^nd Sunday (B) -  [ Isaiah 35:4-7a  | Psalm 146 | James 2:1-5 | + Mark 7:31-37]

[__01]  Secrecy is an advantage. Secrets are guarded carefully, revealed selectively.

The secret is our security.  And, on hard drives, or on the computers in of the FBI in Washington D.C. or the CIA in Langley, Virginia, national secrets are kept for our national security.

For your protection and mine, we rely on the government, for example, to protect secrets.

[__02] In the Gospel this Sunday, a man is healed miraculously and gains the ability to speak and hear. Speaking and hearing. For the moment, however Jesus would like to keep his dramatically improved condition a closely guarded secret.

Secrecy is an advantage. Or, we might say, there are times to talk, times to listen.

[__03] In this section of the Gospel of Mark, we read of a man who is in his first semester, the Fall semester of following Jesus. Really, his first day of school.

And, we might say that this man is sitting in the front row of the classroom. Actually, this deaf man had been was carried to the front row of the classroom by other people who begged Jesus – the teacher and healer – to help  and heal the deaf man.

Secrecy, for the moment, is to the man’s advantage, but this does not mean that he will keep silent forever.

The same will be true in the Gospel of next Sunday when Peter identifies Jesus as the Messiah. Peter is also asked to keep silent. But, this will be a temporary ban on speaking, cell phone use, and other devices.

[__04]  Before we can speak up in class at school or at work, we usually do a great deal of listening, studying, even memorizing. We do this so that information printed in the book is now written in our minds and stated clearly with our words. 

The same is true in the revelation of God’s word, and revelation of God’s commandments.

In the Bible , we read that God’s words – God’s commandments – are to be written on our  hearts.

In this regard, when we follow choose good over evil, we are not simply following an external command but also our internal conscience which has been guided by these commands.

The eager man in the Gospel is on a gradual journey as we are all are.

And, there are certainly times in our lives when we are called to speak up or to articulate what we know to be true in our hearts and in our faith.

Certainly we encounter others who have different values, different priorities and those who would, perhaps, not understand the our Catholic ethic about the sanctity of life, or the sanctity of marriage.

We may encounter those have memorized – or learned from their experience -- a completely different set of values.

This is all the more reason that secrecy becomes an advantage. In this regard, secrecy is not an excuse to keep 

silent, but simply a reason to pray for God’s help in difficult circumstances with people who do not share our values.

In secrecy, we pray to God for strength, so that in public we might also do what the man in th Gospel does – proclaim the Good News – by our words and actions.  [___fin__]