Homilies & Thoughts

It is interesting to look at advertisements for charities, especially those that feed or provide medical treatment to the poor. When it comes to international charities, they often feature many pictures of those in need. These charities may even offer symbolic adoptions, where you receive photos and biographical details about a specific person. However, with local charities, this is rarely the case. Local organizations tend to avoid using photos of individuals altogether, relying instead on facts and figures. There is a simple reason for this: when we give money to distant causes in places we will likely never visit, we crave a personal connection. We want to see the faces of those we help because it makes us feel good—and it feels safe. But when it comes to giving locally, we often do not want to see the faces of those in need, because there is a chance we might run into them. We shy away from confronting suffering in our own community, fearing that if we truly grasp the depth of the need, we will be forced to share in their pain. As long as the poor remain a faceless mass, hidden behind statistics and dollar signs, we can carry on with our lives undisturbed.

Tonight, I would like to reflect on the topic of hypocrisy, particularly the various ways in which it tends to manifest. Whenever I hear the word hypocrisy, what often comes to mind, perhaps due to the time and place of my upbringing in Alabama, is televangelists. These were men who promoted the Gospel on television but frequently targeted particular sins with great fervor. Over the years, how many of them did we see fall from grace, as it was revealed that the very sins they condemned so passionately were the ones they themselves committed in secret—and they were inevitably caught.

In this story of physical healing, we are directed to a much deeper reality—the sacramentality of the world. Sacramentality means that the physical world is a window into God’s presence and action. In the sacraments of the Church, we see this clearly: water becomes the means of new life in baptism; bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. But sacramentality goes beyond the sacraments themselves—it is woven into the fabric of the world. In the gospel, the man’s ears are opened, and his tongue is freed. Jesus uses the physical—his hands, his spittle, his voice—to bring healing. This is not incidental. God works through the created world to bring about salvation.