Iustus es Domine, et rectum iudicium tuum - You are just, O Lord, and all your judgements are right. Today’s Introit Chant was one of the items we recorded for our “Tempus per annum” CD. It’s an ancient piece, which admirably conveys the power and depth of the text: brief, simple, perfect in form; set in the First Mode; wonderfully expressive; easily learned, and easily prayed. The Chant helps us to join the Psalmist in making a bold confession of faith in God’s justice, and in the righteousness of all His judgements. It ends with a little twist, as the one praying asks to be treated according to another outstanding attribute of God: His mercy.
I’d like now to put this Old Testament text side by side with the comment of the crowd as recorded by St. Mark at the end of today’s Gospel: He has done all things well (7:37).
First though, the Psalm: Iustus es Domine. The trouble is: God seems sometimes not to be just, and his judgements not to be right. The ancient Israelites had no problem with bad things happening to bad people. They were convinced that sin deserves punishment, and if they themselves were the sinners, they stood by to take that. But sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes, apparently without reason, darkness prevails over light. Sometimes evil triumphs over good. Another Psalm (43/44) dwells in agony on the current calamities and miseries of the people, then cries out in bafflement: all this happened to us even though we had not forgotten you; we had not been disloyal to your covenant; our hearts had not turned away from you, nor had our feet strayed from your paths (vv 17-18). This problem of apparent divine injustice is presented most starkly in the book of Job. Job, unlike his friends, is ready to reproach God for unjust dealings: and at the end God commends him for that. The Old Testament writers were not able to solve the connundrum, but they clung nevertheless to their conviction, to the truth: that God is just, God is good, God is merciful, God does all things well.
Today’s Gospel story of the healing of the deaf and dumb man is proper to St. Mark: having no parallel in Matthew or Luke. It’s closely connected with another story, also proper to Mark, that follows soon afterwards: the healing of a blind man in Bethsaida (8:22-26). Without doubt St. Mark tells these stories to show that Jesus fulfils Messianic prophecy. We heard in our first reading today: Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing (35:5-6, AV). Without doubt, also, Mark wants us to understand these two healings spiritually. This is the Gospel which most strongly insists on the deafness and blindness of the disciples. Time and again they fail to understand what Jesus says, what he does, who he is. To be able to believe in Jesus, then, suggests Mark, we all need a divine gift, a divine healing. To this day the Catholic Church evokes this in her baptism ceremonies, when the Priest touches the ears and mouth of the neophyte, and pronounces the Aramaic word of Jesus: Ephphatha. Be opened! Be opened, by divine grace, to hear God’s word, and to sing his praise!
All this, I suppose, is obvious enough. What I want to emphasise now, though, is the oddity of this whole scene. Jesus here precisely does not want to be recognised as Messiah. In fact he doesn’t want to be recognised at all, by anyone. He’s heading back to Galilee, but by the most circuitous route imaginable. He’s in gentile territory, and seems reluctant to leave it. So he first goes North - that is, in the opposite direction - then swings round to the Decapolis, East of Jordan and South of Galilee. For rather brief periods of history, Israel had had a tenuous hold on this area: but now it’s definitely gentile. The last time Jesus was here, the people asked him to leave (5:17). Now they bring him a deaf man to cure, and Jesus’ compassion gets the better of him. So he cures the man: but secretly, in a private place, and he forbids them to tell anyone what has happened. They of course loudly tell everyone they can find, and they cry out: He has done all things well!
By that they mean: he has cured our friend. But for Jesus, this miracle of healing was, as it were, an aside, a distraction. For St. Mark it has strong symbolic importance, but is not itself the point; not the focus; not what Jesus came to do. Please note anyway that Jesus cured no one else in the Decapolis. Nor did he preach the Gospel there. Nor did he right their wrongs, or take away their griefs. Why? Because his mission was far bigger than that, and better also. When those people said “he has done all things well”, they certainly spoke rightly, but their words were far more true than they could then understand.
We see how Jesus “did all things well” above all as we contemplate him hanging on the Cross. Jesus is there reconciling us to God. He is there bringing God’s justice and God’s mercy together in one act. He is undoing the work of the devil; opening the way for us back to paradise; inaugurating the perfect restoration of our wounded human nature. More than that: he is opening up for us the way to eternal life; to perfect union with God; to divine Sonship in the Holy Spirit; to heavenly joy without end.
Iustus es Domine, et rectum iudicium tuum. Bad things still happen in our lives, in our societies, in the Church, in history. It’s very legitimate to ask that horrible calamities be averted; that God treat us according to his mercy. This prayer is pleasing to God, and often he will accept it. But when by divine Providence bad things happen to good people, those who are in Christ need never despair. We Christians know that what really matters in this life - ultimately what alone matters - is having God; getting to God; being filled by God; living with God in love. Take away everything else whatever, and those who are in Christ are still rich beyond measure. In him we see how God is truly just and good, with a fullness of meaning the Old Testament Psalmist could never have dreamed of.
And all of this is present in the Holy Eucharist. Having that, we have everything; we have Jesus; we have enough.