March 15th, 2020

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​                Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps which thou 
                  hast sucked. But Jesus said, Yea rather, blessed are they 
                           that hear the word of God, and keep it.
                                                                (St. Luke xi. 27, 28)


In last week's Gospel, a heathen woman taught us how to come to know ourselves, repent of our sins, and to supplicate Christ for His all-powerful, merciful love that heals body and soul. You will remember that the Syro-Phoenician woman taught us how to express humility before God- that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves. (Collect Lent II) She taught us also that if we are to be healed inwardly and spiritually we must persistently pursue the Lord Jesus and to say at all times O Lord, thou Son of David, have mercy upon me.(St Matthew 15. 22) I hope that like her we came to know ourselves as spiritual whelps or dogs who are never worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under [the Lord’s] table. (Prayer of Humble Access)

I hope that we learned also that the faith of the Syro-Phoenician woman is not meant to encourage temporary appeals in times of earthly emergencies. Her daughter was, after all, grievously vexed with a devil (Idem). Our appeal to Christ must be a constant pursuit of sanctification. We are to come near to the Lord in good times and in bad. We are to search for Him, find Him, and embrace the Grace that He gives to heal our sin-sick souls. As Jesus insists in today’s Gospel, Blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it. (St. Luke 11. 28) 

Today, another woman, this time a Jewish one, having witnessed Jesus’ healing of the deaf and dumb man and listening to His Word, praised and lauded Him with these words: Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps that gave thee suck. (St. Luke 11.27) Or, Happy is the Woman that has Thee for her Son. The mother…of one who ‘speaks as never man spoke’, that has so much of the Grace of Heaven in Him and is so great a blessing to this earth, as Matthew Henry explains it. (M. Henry Comm…) Jesus is unimpressed. He insists that the source or cause of all wisdom and righteousness is God. It may very well be true, and indeed is, that the womb that bare Him and the paps which He had sucked were blessed- His mother was, after all, the Blessed Virgin Mary. But she was blessed because she heard the Word of God, and kept it. In other words, she was blessed, indeed blessed…among women (Luke 1. 42)) because her soul magnified the Lord, and her spirit had rejoiced in God her Saviour.( St. Luke 1. 47) Blessedness comes from hearing God’s Word, retaining it, nourishing it, and giving birth to it literally and spiritually in human life.

Since the source of all truth is God’s Word, we are called to hear this truth, keep and perfect it. Keeping the Word of God in our souls is what faith's pilgrimage back to God is all about. We must not seek to be healed of incidental demons only to travel on our merry way, forgetting about the nature of God’s Word that longs to transform us more deeply and lastingly. We are called not to treat God and His Word as the doctor and his medicine at Urgent Care. Faith seeks for healing a chronic condition. That chronic condition is sin. Sometimes faith has a particular demon that needs exorcising. Sometimes faith needs help in making it through the common drudgery of life. But faith must always be conquering its vices by amassing those virtues that fortify it against the assaults of other demons. Faith seeks comprehensive healing. The medicine of faith must be allowed to cure the body, soul, and spirit if true spiritual health is to be found.

At the beginning of today's Gospel we read that Jesus was casting out a devil and it was dumb.(St. Luke 11. 14) The man whom Jesus finds is physically deaf and dumb. Obviously, he can neither hear nor speak. He cannot hear the Word of God and keep it because he cannot hear anything. Imagine being in his condition? Imagine not being able to connect with the outside world through words heard and words spoken. We wouldn’t be able to hear poetry recited or music that is sung or played. Sometimes I think that we are so unthankful for the gift of hearing and speech. And look now how our world misuses both. They hear what they want to hear. They take words and insinuate their own malicious interpretations upon them. For what? To destroy the false gods who possess them. 

They may not be physically deaf and dumb, but they are certainly spiritually deaf and dumb. They have not heard the Word of God addressing them because they have been too moved and defined by the noise of this world. St. Paul tells us that mindless jabber, filthiness, foolish talking, and jesting (Eph. 5. 4) too often express and define our lives. He warns us against being deceived by vain words that provoke the wrath of God. (Ibid, 6) He reminds us also that when we hear the Word, and keep it as a habit in our hearts, we must then give thanks for it. (Ibid, 4) We cannot begin to give thanks to God for His Word, until the demons of our deaf and dumb natures have been cast off. Hearing God’s Word and keeping it, St. Paul suggests, cannot come about if we are having fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. (Ibid, 8, 11)

In our Gospel for today, we read that When the devil was gone out…of the deaf and dumb man…the dumb (man) spake. (St. Luke 11.14) and the people wondered.  Those present were amazed. And so too, in our own fallen world, people will be confused and sore-amazed when we begin to hear God’s Word and keep it. God no sooner unlooses our tongues in new spiritual ways, begins to change our lives, than our family members, friends, and others become judgmental and censorious. In the Gospel, some of them said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. And others sought a sign from heaven.(St. Luke 11. 15,16) When we begin to hear God’s Word and it begins to grow and mature in our lives, people will suspect that psychological imbalance and mental instability are hard at work within us. They will judge us. Many will become impatient and then indignant with us. Some will sense that this world and the words that enslave them to it are being judged and measured by the still small voice of God’s Word hard at work in our hearts and souls. They might begin to perceive that our silence is true Wisdom’s best reply. (Euripides)

But Jesus makes it clear that when our spiritual ears are opened and our spiritual tongues are unloosed, God’s Word and not the devil has responded to man’s sickness and infirmity. If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore shall they be your judges. (Ibid, 19) The Devil disrupts, divides, stirs up, confuses, and confounds men with lots of noise. Jesus says, But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you. (St. Luke 11.20) It is the finger of God alone that is powerful enough to find our dumb and deaf silence and to infuse it with the healing and salvific Word of Truth. The Devil or Beelzebub ensnares and entangles us in panic and fear over earthly calamities that won’t make much difference if we remain deaf to God’s Word. Through television, the internet, and the cell phone the Devil is whipping us up into a veritable frenzy, perfecting anxiety and the fear of death. He is having lots of fun. And Christians, falling for it hook, line, and sinker, are being made deaf to the Word of God. The Devil is no friend of spiritual silence and the Word of God that must be our chief concern and interest. He is not divided against himself (St. Luke xi. 18), for his single determination is to sever us from the still small voice of God (1 Kings xix. 12) that would calm our souls and keep us on course to God and Kingdom.

Someone much stronger than Satan must drive Satan out. Someone whose power can overcome all confusion must enable us to hear and respond to God’s voice once again. That one is God’s Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. For when a stronger than [Satan] shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all the armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils. (St. Luke 11. 21) When Jesus the Word drives out Satan, Satan's power is gone. When the Word drives the Devil out, then the Devil is silenced. Goodness and healing come from God’s Word alone. God speaks His healing Word through His Son Jesus Christ and the powers of darkness, disorder, and despair are scattered. God’s Word of love alone banishes Satan’s deafening noise.

Keeping the Word of God is the hard part. Because of silence and stillness, the unclean spirit has gone out of us. (Ibid, 24) But then there is a danger. We walk through dry places. (Idem) We have been emptied but not filled. We might be healed of Satan’s indwelling and yet not from his ongoing effort to confuse and confound us. As the Abbott Bruno says, we are: 
Empty, since he finds there no charity, nor true faith, nor humility, nor patience, nor justice, nor mercy, nor any of the other things with which the souls of the saints are furnished.  How does he find it? Swept and garnished: he finds it as he desires to find it. (St. Bruno, Toale)

In this Lent, we must find more than courage to welcome Christ the Strong Man into our hearts. We must pray to keep Christ the Word alive and growing in our hearts. With the deaf and mute man in today’s Gospel, we must cherish and treasure the gift of hearing Christ’s healing Word for the first time. We must be silent and quiet each day as we renew our faith with all humility and much patience. We must embrace God’s Word of mercy as a healing love we do not deserve in order to be rewarded with the health of salvation that God’s justice affords. We must be blessed because first we heard the Word, and in hearing the Word, we believed, and in believing we safeguarded it. (St. Bruno, Toale) Safeguarding means receiving with meekness the implanted Word which is able to save [our] souls.The first sound that today’s deaf and dumb man hears is God’s Word. He speaks and, no doubt, praises God for it! Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it. (Ibid, 28) 
Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
 
 

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