Healing the dumb Fr. James Jorgenson

Glory to Jesus Christ. Today's Gospel, which

is taken from the selections from the Gospel

of St. Matthew, which we see being read now in

the summertime, we see two miracles that Jesus

performs. The two blind men to whom he gives

sight, and then the man who couldn't speak, and

Jesus... casts out the demon, so to speak, and

he's able to speak again, or to speak for the

first time. This prompts me, and I would suggest

you as well, to thank God for the two gifts that

he has given to us, the gift of speech and the

gift of sight. Today's gospel, I should say,

before I get too far into that, there's a consistent

interpretation about these blind men that the

fathers see the irony that these blind men have

spiritual vision and they can call Jesus son

of David, which is a messianic title. So they

acknowledge him to be the Messiah and it's the

grumbling Pharisees. that are in the audience

that they won't accept that. As a matter of fact,

they're contemptuous words. He casts out demons

by the prince of demons. How terrible to attribute

to evil the good work that's performed. But again,

these gifts that God has given to us, the gift

of vision and the gift of speech. Vision. We

take that so much for granted. But then we know

that there are some people, and I think of one

person in particular. There's a young girl about

10 or 12 years old. She's in one of our parishes.

As a matter of fact, she's the daughter of our

priest who's in Eureka, California. And she has

a medical condition. about which the doctors

can't correct by surgery. And she's in danger

of perhaps eventually going blind. So her name

is Monica, and I would commend Monica to your

prayers to join them with mine and other people

in the diocese that God will continue to give

her the gift of vision. That vision, as I said,

is a gift that God has given to us that we take

for granted. This past week, I took my driver's

renewal test, and I passed the vision test, but

the written test is another matter. I passed

it, but don't underestimate those when you come

up for your renewal. The gift of speaking. Two

instances that I can mention to you. When I was

growing up in our neighborhood, there were two

kids that we played with, and their parents couldn't

speak. They couldn't make noises, and the children

understood what the parents could make, and I

remember them vividly. how they would make these

noises and communicate through noises rather

than the normal manner of communication, which

is speech. And then the other one, which occurred

more recently, actually when we were still in

Michigan, doorbell rang one afternoon and Matushka

went to get it. And, of course, I was in another

room. When she finished, I asked her, well, what

was that? She said, well, there's a fellow here.

I bought these two soup bowls. And I thought,

why do you want to buy soup bowls? And the fellow

who was at the door had a card, and he said,

I'm mute. I cannot speak. And I sell these to

try and make a living. And I thought, boy. I

don't know how I would have, I might have said

no thank you. But every time I use those soup

bowls, I think of that incident. But how we can

abuse these gifts of vision and speech. Vision,

of course, to look at things we shouldn't look

at. And of course, that doesn't need any elaboration.

More frequently, I think, is dirty looks and

stink eye. That's a young kid's expression that

I don't think I had heard until recently. How

that can really hurt you if someone gives you

a dirty look or a stink eye. How much nicer it

is when we're tempted to give someone a dirty

look to sort of smile and nod, something like

that. The tongue is another thing. How often

we can sin with our tongue. The scriptures say

rather often that the tongue is sharper than

any two -edged sword and how we can use that

tongue to praise God, to say nice things rather

than to be malicious. You've probably heard that

once in a while we run into in our life, it's

a rare person, but someone that you can say,

I've never heard him or her say a bad word about

anyone. Doesn't that sort of make me feel bad

that there are people like that? Of course, it

should be an inspiration for us to watch what

we say. If we don't have something good to say

about someone, better not to say it at all. Even

simple things like griping. Do you know what

arping means? That's a word that I've learned

out here from the Urban Dictionary of all things.

It's from AARP, retired people. Arping is a person...

usually an elderly person who's constantly complaining

about things that he can't do anything about.

That's arping. Now, I imagine arping isn't a

sin in and of itself, but who wants to be around

someone who's arping all the time? Again, how

we use our tongue. We ask the Lord to... guard

our sight, to guard our lips. Just this morning

I was reading Psalm 17, and one of the verses

is, If thou testest me, thou wilt find no wickedness

in me. My mouth does not transgress. Oh, if only

I could and we could say that more frequently.

To use our tongue to praise God. to praise other

people, to use our vision, to read the scriptures,

to study, to thank God especially for these two

gifts that we again take for granted, the gift

of sight and the gift of speech. And we ask God

that he will allow us to use these two precious

gifts that he has given to us. to his praise

and glory forever and ever. Amen.