Let those who have ears hear and be transformed by the Word.

Homily by Fr. Ron Floyd
given at St. Francis Xavier Church in Hyannis
on Sexagesima Sunday, February 7th, 2010


Those who have ears, let them hear! But we all have ears, most all of us can hear, can't we?

In the Gospel today Jesus proclaims to His Apostles to them it is given in parables,
but to you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom.

Why is it so often that Jesus speaks to the people in parables and mysterious ways.

Why does Jesus often seem so extreme, and other times overly timid. At one point in the Gospel Jesus speak of the poor and the peacemakers. At another point He tells His disciples that He came to create division and call down fire upon the earth. Jesus tells us not to judge and to forgive our neighbor and yet He makes a whip and drives the money changers out of the temple. Is Jesus a hypocrite just like the Pharisees who He condemns for their hardened hearts? Or is there something else at work?

Many people read the Sacred Scriptures and take many different messages from it because the Scriptures are an imperfect means of communication. God speaks the message of truth heart to heart, whispering to the in most core of our being, and yet we are charged with the almost impossible task of putting God's perfect communication into fallible human language. If you ever learned a foreign language you know that until you master the language even if you understand the basics of what is being said you can't always capture the nuances. How much more difficult must it be to capture the nuances of God's word spoken directly to our heart.

Human language is an abstraction, a stepping away from the real thing to signify a reality with a symbol. But God's Word, which has the power to create all things from nothing is not an abstraction but reality. If God speaks to man of Happiness or Love, we experience not just cheap overused words but the very essence of happiness and love. Imagine you were given an ice cream cone--the ice cream is, like God's word, a reality but what if I asked you to communicate an ice cream cone to someone else, could you do it? This is the task that the Prophets are given, this is the task that all of us who hear God's voice are given, to communicate the reality of God's message with the symbols of human language.

This is why St. Paul says at the beginning of the letter to the Hebrews: God, who, in ancient times, spoke in times past to our fathers by the prophets and in varied ways. In these days, hath spoken to us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world. Who being the brightness of his glory and the figure of his substance and upholding all things by the word of his power, making purgation of sins, sitteth on the right hand of the majesty on high.

Jesus is the REALITY of the WORD of GOD incarnate and Jesus' message is primarily Himself His REAL PRESENCE--Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity who dwells among us. Jesus speaks to the people in hidden and mysterious ways because He knows their hearts. He knows that people will always try to take the word of God and twist it to their own devices. So to the crowds Jesus speaks in strange parables or extreme injunctions because Jesus wants the strangeness and radicalness of His message to open up their ears to the REALITY OF HIS PERSON. Friends we can't take scripture in lifeless bite size pieces we must consume the whole Word the whole living Christ if that Word is going to change us into the Saints God wants us to be.

Let those who have ears hear and be transformed by the Word.