As you entered church today, hopefully you noticed the new banner hanging over the altar.  It will remain throughout the coming year, as a visual reminder of our theme in this, the third year of our journey to the heart of “The New Evangelization.”  If you remember, in our first year, we were invited to focus our attention on JESUS, on his invitation to a deeper and more intimate personal relationship.  Last year, we reflected together on how we are called to deepen that relationship through Prayer and Sacramental Living, experiencing the sacraments not merely as “rites of passage”, but as a privileged way of entering into the life of Christ and bringing him into the world.  

This weekend, we begin year 3 of our journey, in which we will focus on the theme of MISSION.  Further inspired by Pope Francis’ declaration that 2016 would be a year dedicated in a special way to God’s infinite love and mercy, we have expanded our theme to embrace that as well: OUR MISSION: SENT FORTH TO PROCLAIM AND LIVE GOD’S MERCY.  Hopefully, the image speaks for itself: a little church in the heart of a big city (that’s us!), suffused with light, radiating that light outward, with the heart and cross of Christ overlooking the whole – much in the same way that the cross on the mountain, and the sight of St. Joseph’s Oratory, uniquely marks the skyline of our own fair city, Montreal.  We may not be the biggest or most important building, but we are here, we are not going away, and Christ has called us to share his light and life with all who surround us. 

To fulfil this mission, we are called to a radical openness to the love of Christ, to an experience of the healing and strength offered through a relationship with him, and to an equally radical commitment to live out in our social lives, our political and economic choices, the way of the Gospel he came to proclaim.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus opens the ears of a deaf man, and heals him of an impediment in his speech.  This healing is interpreted as a fulfillment of the messianic age foretold by Isaiah in today’s first reading: a promise of God freeing his people from fear, illness and physical limitation; of God freeing the arid earth by making springs of water flow in the desert.  Jesus is the One who comes to fulfil this prophecy.  He comes to open our eyes and ears, our voices, hearts and minds; to open up every dimension of our lives to the wonder and challenge of God.  To each of us as individuals, to all of us as a community, Christ reaches out to us, touches us, and says to us: EPHPHATHA! BE OPENED! 

What needs to happen so that all of us can hear that invitation anew?  What parts of my life do I tend to close off from God, am I reluctant to invite Jesus into?  How can my home, my family, this parish community, our city, our nation, our world - become a place where the love of Jesus is known and experienced?  Where his real and living presence becomes the central organizing principle of our lives?  Jesus invites us today to see with his eyes, to hear with his ears, to touch with his hands, to love with his heart. He invites us to embrace our mission to live and proclaim the Father’s mercy.   He invites us as church to be a place not of exclusion and condemnation, but of healing, forgiveness, and wholeness.

God’s word says it in different ways this weekend: “be opened.”  Isaiah invites us to be open to a hope that conquers fear, whose signs are clear and concrete.  Through the apostle James, we are invited to be open to the needs of the poor, as we acknowledge and repent of our natural tendency to close our hearts to the poor and marginalized while showing partiality to the rich and powerful.  In the Gospel, Jesus opens the ears and loosens the tongue of one who is both deaf and mute, and opens those who witness this healing to new faith in his power to save.   

How, at this time in your life, is God calling you to “be opened”?  For each of us, that invitation is deeply personal, and reflects the wide variety of circumstances of our lives: a new school year, a new job, a new relationship, maybe a new challenge within an existing job or relationship.  As we are confronted with change, how can we allow our relationship with Christ to be the constant that provides us with the inner stability we need to negotiate the many transitions which life presents to us?   

In a few weeks, Pope Francis will be making his first pastoral visit to the North American continent.  (Mention ABC Town Hall meeting – Valerie, Ricardo, Rosemary, Sr. Norma.)  After spending several days in Cuba, he will fly to the U.S. and speak to the United Nations in New York, address the joint houses of Congress in Washington DC, and attend the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.  He will celebrate Mass and preside over ecumenical and interfaith prayer services.  He will meet with young people, with prisoners, with the sick, and with immigrants who have risked life and limb in order to secure freedom and a better life for their children. He will speak with compassion and strength about the rights of the poor, the vulnerable, the unborn, the elderly, the prisoner, the migrant – of the very earth that cries out for healing and relief. Doubtless, he will in his loving and fatherly way touch us, teach us, challenge us, make us laugh and cry – as Jesus, whom he represents, did before him.

As well, this past week, the Justice and Peace Commission of the CCCB published a pastoral letter entitled “A Church Seeking Justice: The Challenge of Pope Francis to the Church in Canada.”  As we enter into the last weeks of a federal election campaign, as we exercise our democratic right to choose those whom we believe are best able to lead our nation in the ways of peace, justice, solidarity, and concern for the common good, may this message from our bishops open us to solidarity:

In a world where human beings are often tossed aside, discarded, pushed to the margins, Pope Francis  has spoken with passion and a sense of urgency about the beauty and dignity of the human person, emphasizing that true humanity is found when we build direct and personal relationships with our brothers and sisters in greatest need, learning to walk together in solidarity and friendship.

Faced with problems on a global scale which threaten to overwhelm us, the Holy Father has summoned us to challenge apathy with empathy, global indifference with a culture of encounter, complacency with an intelligent commitment to justice and the common good.   Witnessing the short-term horrors and long-term devastation of war, he has reminded us that while violence begets violence, it is listening and dialogue, encounter and forgiveness that open a way towards reconciliation, living together in a future with peace.

Reading the signs of the times, Pope Francis has been tireless in saying there is something deeply wrong with economic structures and market principles which leave billions of people living in poverty, calling each and all of us to creatively imagine a different way of structuring our common life, such that the human person, our common well-being, and care for the world in which we live have primacy of place in our economic and political decisions.

Let us pray that those elected to lead and serve the people of Canada will do so with wisdom, balance, commitment to justice for all, and genuine attention to the needs of the sick, poor and marginalized: within our own borders, but also throughout the world.  Let us commit ourselves to create pathways of dialogue and mutual understanding, resisting the temptation to seek refuge in the politics of fear, division, and alienation. 

When I was on Facebook last night, I saw that haunting image that so many of you have seen on TV or on your computers this week, and which has come to symbolize the thousands of refugees who have died in the attempt to escape from war and internal displacement in North Africa and the Middle East.  I am referring, of course, to the image of the lifeless body of three-year old Alan Kurdi, lying on the shore of the Turkish beach, who with his mother and five-year old brother, drowned in his family’s attempt to flee to safety in Europe. 

It is tempting to look away, to ignore that such things are happening virtually on our doorsteps.  But I could not help but agree with the words of Fr. James Martin in his Facebook post:

This photo must be seen. We cannot ignore these grievous affronts to human dignity. May our hearts be open to help the refugees, the migrants and the displaced persons who suffer so much in our world. And may this little boy rest in the peace that eluded him here on earth.

"Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” (Mt 25:44-45)

If we want to help, there is much we can do.  We can Pray.  Learn.  Act.  We can open our eyes, our minds, our hearts, our wallets, our borders.  Then the words of our opening hymn this weekend will become a reality: