DEAF AND DUMB

 A SERMON FOR THE 11TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

There’s a big difference between a person who gradually loses his hearing as he becomes older and a person who is born deaf.  Outwardly, they look the same.  But as soon as they open their mouth and speak, you know which is which.  The man who learned as a child to speak, when he was able to hear the speech of his parents, even though he has now gone deaf, still remembers what the words are supposed to sound like, and is still able to speak just as well as any one of us.  But the man who was born deaf, who has never heard the sound of a human voice, although he will pronounce the words as best he can, he’ll sound quite different.  How close he comes to resembling our own speech will depend on the quality of the speech therapy he received, and on his aptitude to learn from his teachers.  What the man born deaf says may very well be the same as the man who goes deaf later in life.  But how he says it will differ considerably, and we may have trouble understanding him.

Obviously, there should be no stigma attached to either person.  We can’t help the shortcomings we may be born with, nor with the physical imperfections that come with advancing age.  But just as obviously, it would be silly to deny those bodily defects or pretend they don’t exist.

Let’s compare this physical deafness with a similar impediment we may not have noticed.  It’s been about fifty years since Paul VI imposed his new Mass on the poor Catholic faithful.  And almost sixty years since the Second Vatican Council inflicted its profound deviations from the Catholic faith.  Today, you’d have to be at least in your sixties to remember attending the traditional Catholic Mass in your own parish church.  Those of us who are left to remember do so with nostalgia and a great deal of sadness at what has been lost.  The huge and beautiful churches filled to capacity every Sunday and  holy day, the sight of thousands of Catholics processing through the streets chanting Latin hymns and saying the rosary, the kindly old parish priest in his cassock, surplice and biretta reading his breviary or hearing confessions, the nuns in their habits ushering the children to their pews, the men in their best Sunday suits and ties and the women in their dresses and chapel veils, or hats.  All gone.  A greater void is that left by the loss of our trust in the clergy who took care of us so well back then.  We never had to doubt the validity of the priest, or be divided because of which liturgy he used or whether he was united with Rome or not.  We never had to wonder whether we could trust him to give us sound Catholic advice when we needed it.  We took it all for granted, and rightfully so, for it was our right as Catholics to expect it.

But what does that have to do with being deaf?  Well, over the course of the years, our memories, like our hearing, have gradually faded.  Today, they are distant and have become almost silent.  They are good memories, fond and pleasant memories of better days, and yet they are painful memories, similar to the memories we have of loved ones long passed away.  We reminisce about the “good old days”, knowing that they are gone, perhaps forever, and that our children will never experience what those days were like.  As we get older, the memories fade, and the voices of the past become ever more faint.  We can’t hear them so well any more.  We do still hear them, but we are becoming deaf.  And yet, despite the growing silence of our memories, despite our growing deafness, we still know how to speak and pray the words of faith because we have not lost those memories entirely and we remember how things are supposed to be.  So long as there are those who remember Catholic life before Vatican II and can speak of it first hand, there will still exist the authentic voice of Tradition.

But what about our children who never knew these times?  For Tradition to continue into their future, it is up to us older ones who do remember to provide them with an adequate substitute for our memories.  Most of the people here in this chapel arrived in this world too late to experience what the Church was like for the two thousand years that came and went before you.  In a sense, you were born deaf.  Those memories of Catholic life are something that must be taught to you, rather than experienced.  You must do your best to listen to the memories of your parents, watch the old movies like Bells of Saint Mary’s and The Song of Bernadette, and learn to appreciate, to the best of your ability, what it must have been like.  But your own Catholic experience is an entirely different one from that of your parents.  You’re made to get up early on Sunday so you can travel long distances to go to a church that isn’t even a real church but a converted barn or somebody’s living room; you’re forced to give up meat on Fridays when the rest of your friends are wolfing down their hot dogs; you have to wear old-fashioned clothes and chapel veils.  In short, you may be tempted to feel that you stand out from the rest of the world, that somehow you don’t fit in, that this traditional religion you belong to is holding you back from doing all the things you want to do.  But for now, you go along with it because your parents make you, out of a sense of obedience to them, or maybe out of the natural desire just to please them.  Will that be enough for you to hold on to the faith you’re taught and the sacraments you receive in these faraway churches once a week?  When you eventually leave home and marry and have your own families, will you be prepared to pass on the true faith to your own children, a faith you’ve received only from books and the experience of others?  Time will tell. But because, through no fault of your own, you young people were born deaf, as it were, you have an impediment.  When it’s your turn to pass on the faith, the knowledge of Catholic culture, the whole experience of what it is to be a Catholic, you have an impediment in your speech because you never knew these things for yourself.  Your speech therapist was your parent who lived through those times, and your ability to speak the truth now depends in large part on how good a teacher they were, and how good a student you were.  How well do you know what it is to be a Catholic?

Like anyone with an impediment, it will require a lot of extra work to overcome the disability of not having known the Church as it once was.  Psychologically, you’ll need to overcome the desire to surrender to this world and just give up on Tradition and the Faith of your Fathers.  But you’ll have help.  If you wonder how on earth the Church can survive when those in it have been deafened by so many years of ear-splitting deception, then read today’s Gospel.  “And they brought unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech: and they beseeched him to put his hand upon him.  And he put his fingers in his ears, and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven he saith unto him, Be opened.  And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.”

We, young and old both, need that helping hand from our blessed Lord.  It is in him alone that we must put our trust, praying daily that he will put his fingers in our ears and touch our tongues so that we may hear and speak as we should.  So that we may constantly strive to keep alive the faith of our fathers, the Catholic life of the Church.  Because these things are not merely cultural treasures to be preserved, like the Polish immigrant who wants to preserve his native costume, his language and his recipe for dill pickles.  No, we’re talking about more important things here, the things on which our salvation and the salvation of our children, and children’s children depend.  Our Catholic life and sacraments must be passed down to them as a precious heirloom, not just as something they can cast aside like so much garbage as soon as they reach the age of eighteen.  I’m not exaggerating when I say that the future and salvation of the world depends on each one of us to do our part.  You parents, when you teach, teach well.  Speak often and with enthusiasm to your children about the things of God.  And if you’re young and still learning, put your heart and soul into knowing as much as you can about your faith.  Don’t ever be discouraged—even if you were born deaf, you can still learn how to speak.  Let every one of us do his best to overcome our own personal defects and keep the faith alive.  If we do, our blessed Lord will take care of us and our descendants, for “he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.”