Streams will burst forth in the desert

God’s Promises. In our First Reading today, God, through the prophet Isaiah, comforts Israel, then exiled into Babylon: “Be strong, fear not! Here is your God . . . He comes to save you.” Isaiah goes on to present a vision of the future promised by God: “the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared . . . the lame leap like a stag . . . the tongue of the mute will sing.”

 God invites us not to despair, for He promises to deliver us. God invites us to trust in Him, for He is true to His word. And so it came to pass, in 538 B.C., through Cyrus the Persian, the Israelites found their way back home. God did set them free. And He gave them back all that was most precious to them — their land, now repossessed; their Temple, later on rebuilt; and their written Law, recovered among the ruins. God indeed fulfilled and continues to fulfill His promises.

Fulfillment in Jesus. In our Gospel Reading, God realizes His desire of fullness of life for all, no longer through prophets, judges and kings, but through His incarnate Son. Moved with pity for a deaf man, inspired by the earnestness of his friends, Jesus “put his finger into the man’s ears and spitting, touched his tongue . . . and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’.” Our Lord Jesus enters the concrete details of our lives — Tyre, Sidon and the Dacapolis, through the people around us — the friends of the deaf man, to address our adversity and restore us to fullness of life — “immediately the man’s ears were opened.”

Coming to Jesus. While God’s plan of a decent, humane life is promised to all, God does not impose Himself upon us. God does not coerce us to embrace His good intentions for us. In a way God allows Himself to be vulnerable before our human freedom which He created and sustains. Consequently, God cannot force His love or His redemption upon us. God waits. And waits. God waits for our free response to His offer of love and His promise of life.

 The tragedy is that while God has only the best in mind for us, we, thinking we know where to find true happiness and fulfillment, refuse God’s offer. Or worse, through our selfishness and sinfulness, we prevent others from claiming what God has in store for them — a dignified existence, a share in the abundance of the earth. God graciously offers what we most deeply desire, His love and salvation. Alas, we look for meaning and fulfillment elsewhere and hinder others from receiving what God has allotted them.

God’s Detestation. God’s promises by Isaiah are awe-inspiring and consoling: “streams will burst forth in the desert … burning sands will become pools, and the thirsty ground, springs of water.” The correlative to these beautiful promises of God is that God abhors deportation and subjugation. God abhors slavery and dehumanization. 

Perhaps if Isaiah addressed us today, he would first proclaim God’s denunciation of our tragic realities: According to the 2009 SWS, 50% of our people rate themselves poor; 39% count themselves among the hungry. We have a housing backlog of 3.8 million; as of last year, a classroom backlog of 74,115. As of 2008, 7.4% or 2.7 million were unemployed. Count among them the self-employed, the SWS estimates 11 million unemployed or 27.9% of the adult work force. 

God must abhor our miserable situation and must detest our poverty and inequality. For God only desires goodness for us. While the Lord desires a decent, humane existence for all, God cannot impose His plans and intentions for us. God invites and waits for us to align our will, our minds and our hearts with His.  

God’s Promise of Renewal. Next year, election year, we have the invaluable opportunity to renew our nation and to revive our spirits, to renew our political life and to reverse our victimization by corrupt public officials. Through our cooperation with grace, through our alignment with God’s desires for us, we can recreate our land and allow springs of hope and faith to burst forth in the desert of cynicism and despair. We can allow the grounds athirst for justice and humanized existence to be turned into springs of new life for all and a new-found freedom to self-actualize. In the end we realize that our hopes for our people are God’s hopes for us also; our noblest desires for our nation are God’s deepest desires for us, too.

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Fr. Manoling Francisco, SJ is a prolific composer of liturgical music and serves on the faculty of the Loyola School of Theology. For feedback on this column, email [email protected]