(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Mass-Blog-for-the-23rd-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time-2024.mp3)
Frank Sinatra scored a major hit with the song “All the Way” in 1957. It also received the Academy Award for Best Original Song in the movie “The Joker is Wild.” What does that have to do with the God we worship? All the Way is how God loves. With that understanding, under different circumstances, Sinatra’s big hit might have also made a suitable hymn for this Sunday’s liturgy. The song opens:
When somebody loves you
It’s no good unless he loves you
All the way
Happy to be near you
When you need someone to cheer you
All the way
Taller than the tallest tree is
That’s how it’s got to feel
Deeper than the deep blue sea is
That’s how deep it goes if it’s real
So in Sunday’s first reading (Is 35:4-7a), God uses Isaiah to communicate that kind of extravagant love to the cheerless and frightened. Note the poetic hyperbole of Isaiah’s interpretation of God’s salvation. Not only will the eyes of the blind be completely opened and the ears of the deaf entirely cleared, but—
The lame will leap like a stag, and the tongue of the mute will sing.
God’s version of “All the Way” is infinitely more poetic than Sinatra’s. And it’s always unconditional. As James points out in the letter we read this Sunday (Jas 2:1-5), while we tend to be partial to those who can benefit us, God’s extravagant love is invested in those who could never repay it—except to pay it forward to others who are equally poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Did not God choose those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he promised to those who love him?,” James asks.
God’s is a Kingdom of All the Way. Jesus’s miracles were all the way, too. In Mark’s gospel from which we read Sunday (Mk 7:31-37), people bring Jesus a deaf and dumb man for whom they hope to do … something … ANYTHING. Jesus lifts this man’s poor spirit from the depths, all the way back up to the heights at which God’s Holy Spirit is expressed—all the way. Jesus groans his own beautiful lyric to complete God’s love song to us:
“Ephphatha!”— “Be opened!” — And immediately the man’s ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly.
Plainly, God’s realm is open All the Way for us, if we choose to enter. No in-between or side entrances. It’s all up front. The people witnessing Jesus’s miracle were astonished at the extent of his skills breaking and entering this poor man’s closed-off universe. “He has done all things well,” they enthuse.
And though Jesus tells them to keep this miracle to themselves, they couldn’t contain the Holy Spirit that filled them. They had to proclaim it beyond their little community. In scriptural terms, “proclaim” means “to bring in full measure” or “to fulfill.” Jesus inspired them, and continues to motivate us, to spread God’s truth all the way to the ends of a Kingdom without end.
–Tom Andel
Our journey of faith is well reflected in this blog. We can go “all the way” as illustrated in Sinatra’s famous song or using the parlance of our time, we can be “all-in!”
The challenge of being all-in is to reorient our lives to be Christ-centered ALL THE TIME! I mean who does that?
Probably very few, though we do have some great examples such as St. Paul, Mother Theresa and others.
Even in our own circles we can find inspirational examples of people who live this way.
The guy who writes this blog is one of them!
Thomas, we are shaped by the people God puts in our lives. You had a lot to do with this blog’s existence. And our parents’ friendship had a lot to do with ours.