Today's Gospel

We Are One Body

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where we explore the gospel of the day, the life and teachings of Jesus, the genius of the gospel. Today's reading is from the Gospel of Mark chapter 7, verses 31-37. Then Jesus returned from the region of Tyra and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee through the region of Decopolis. And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and they besought him to lay his hands upon him. In taking him aside from the multitude privately, Jesus put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Epitha, that is be opened." And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. And he charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, "He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak." It's a great reading too. Sometimes we read these readings, we've heard them many times before, read them many times before, but it's important to put yourself there, right?

So what does Jesus do? He puts his fingers in this man's ears and then touches his tongue to the fingers. And how pleasant does any of that sound to you? To me, I certainly don't want to put my fingers really in anybody's ears. And I certainly don't want to touch my tongue with my finger after I put it in someone's ears, okay? But what does that say? It's like, there's this great separation that I've created between me and you. And Jesus says we are one body. Jesus is living as if we are one body. I'm not living as if we're one body. I'm like, 'I don't want to put my finger in your ears." Because when I put my finger in your ears, it doesn't feel like I'm putting my finger in my ears. And these are the separations we create between each other. And yes, it's a humorous way of looking at it and a serious way of looking at it. But the reality is, is that when we meet people, it's easy to create otherness rather than oneness. It's easy to put people in, "Oh, you're in that category, and that's not my category, or you're in that box, but that's not my box."

And the gospel is a constant invitation for us to live, move, breathe as one body. And it is a radical challenge. It's radical. We call it radical and relevant. It is radical 2,000 years ago. It's radical today. It's never going to stop being radical. Because our human nature, our fallen human nature needs to be radically redeemed, not tweaked, not a little tweak. I don't need a little tweak. I need to be radically redeemed. You don't need a little tweak. You need to be radically redeemed. And we come together each day just for a few moments so that God can remind us of our need for radical transformation. Have a great day and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.

I hope you're enjoying the daily gospel reflections. So one of the things I love doing, spending this time with you each day. Recently, I released a book called 33 Days to Divine Mercy. If you haven't had a chance to check that out yet, I encourage you to do that today.