Okay, if some of you are visiting today--the people in this parish know that I often talk about a buzzard.  Since I was seven years old I’ve had this invisible critter; some of you call it “the committee in the head,” or the “mean voices in your head” and I’ve been calling it “my buzzard.”  It’s a mean critter.  Even when I was a little alter boy it would yell at me and criticize me.  A lady in the parish gave me this (holds up stuffed, awkward looking floppy buzzard) as a prop.

Some of you fellow lunatics, I think, know what I mean:  this constant harping and putting you down and beating you up in your head; and the harder you try, sometimes the meaner it gets.  Alright, well, he’s with us today and he’s got three big objections to today’s gospel.  That’ the first point. 

The second point is, when I was in high school one summer I was sent to work with a carpenter.  He aged visibly that summer because he’d say, “Hand me a plane,” and I’d had him a level.  And he’d say, "Hand me a three penny nail,” and I’d hand him a thumbtack and he’d get so mad at me, he’d say, “Dibble!  Are you deef?”—that’s how he said the word deaf.  “Dibble!  Are you deef?”  Are you deef!  In today’s gospel there is a man who is “deef” and I’m often “deef” about our Lord, about his word.  I am, and some of you, being human are sometimes “deef.”  And the gospel today is about a man who is “deef.”  He’s deaf and our Lord heals him.  Notice how fleshy our Lord is:  he makes spittle.  I use to try to clean it up, “a certain solution of saliva…”  No, the Greek word our Lord makes spittle and he reaches and his touches the man and our Lord groans—it took some energy out of Christ to do this.  Then he heals the man.  So the thing today is about getting healed from deafness.  My deafness, and some of yours, about being deaf to the people you love, being deaf sometimes even to the gospel.  Okay.

Here’s my friend, the Buzzard, he’s very anti-Catholic, he’s anti-spirituality, he’s anti-religion, and he’s emphatically anti-me.  Now when I go like this (raises his hand, gestures with his fingers in a “talk-talk-talk” manner) this is him speaking:  “Boring!  Boring! Sunday after Sunday, the gospel’s been this way, little children.  Boring!  The same old thing.  Boring!”  Okay, now pay attention.  Sometimes when we hear things over and over again it takes a long time for some thing to click.  I taught kids for 30 years and sometimes they would say, “I was a sophomore in college before something I heard a hundred times in the gospel clicked.”  Or a man has just had a new baby and he’s holding the baby and his wife in his arms and all of a sudden something that’s been taught about Christ clicks.  Sometimes it takes over and over for things to click.  Are you listening?  “I’m listening, I am.”  Okay! 

The famous true story of Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller, remember Helen Keller, born deaf, dumb, blind?  She was a little savage just running around and the parents called in an Irish Catholic lady to work with Helen.  The Catholic lady’s name was Annie Sullivan.  I’m sure some of you know the story.  Annie came and she wondered, how can I reach this deaf, dumb, blind kid?  Annie figured out:  by touch, just by touch. 

So month after month after agonizing, exhausting, useless month Annie Sullivan would grab Helen’s hand and try to tape out on Helen’s hand the different tapings for wood, milk, dog, etc.  Finally, after months of  agonizing over and over and over, Helen was outrageous and she took the dinner table pitcher of water and threw it off the table and Annie’s nerves snapped, and she grabbed Helen by the hand, she dragged her outdoors--some of you know the story—and she made Helen pump out a fresh pitcher of water.  Helen’s other hand was free and Annie grabbed it and as she had done so many thousands of times almost automatically, Annie began to tap out on Helen’s free hand the number of tapings that meant water.  And, suddenly, Helen shook her hand free, she dropped the pitcher and then she grabbed Annie’s hand again and this time, after all these exhausting months, Helen grabbed Annie’s hand she tapped out very slowly the number of tapings that meant water, and then incandescent joy swept over Helen’s face and she ran around the property and she grabbed grass and she ran back to Annie “grass,” and tree, all day.  And, as Annie writes in her book, it finally clicked because you had to do it over and over and over and over…finally clicked. 

And that’s why you and I, Sunday after Sunday: “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy…I believe in God…Glory to the . . .”  I have had kids tell me that things clicked finally in college, as I mentioned, a man, and a wife has a new baby and something clicks.  So, are you “deef,” are you getting the point?

(BUZZARD) “Yeah, I get the point.  Move on!”  Well, do you have another objection?  “Yeah, I’ve got another objection.  Jesus is sooo namby-pamby!  Wimpy!  Jesus is a wimp. ‘Forgive your enemies, forgive and forget, turn the other cheek.’  What a wimp! 

Jesus was not a wimp.  Have you any idea the courage, the guts that Jesus had in the gospels, how he took on the big shots of his day, standing there alone, Jesus, the apostles were all scared.  The big shots in Jesus’ day, now listen, were the Scribes and the Pharisees.  They were the spiritual leaders, the political punch as well.  And, try to listen, don’t be “deef.”  Look at the things Jesus says to these big shots, Jesus, alone.  It’s as if I went to Rome and took on the College of Cardinals:  “Hey, listen you clowns, get to the 21st century!  My name if Michael Dibble and I’m going to . . .”  Not very likely.  And this carpenter stands at the front of these people over and over—our Lord says, “You know what you remind me of, you Scribes and Pharisees?  You remind me of whited sepulchers—you know, nice clean tombstones and underneath are rotting bones.  You know what you Pharisees remind me of?  You remind me of people who clean the outside of the cup; you keep cleaning the outside of the cup and inside there is poison.  You know what you Pharisees remind me of?  You remind me of people who make rule after rule after legalistic rule that are heavy for people to carry and you guys don’t lift a finger to help them.”  Those are all quotes from Jesus.

Why do you think Jesus was crucified?  He made crazy claims:  “The Father and I are one and the same.  Take up your cross and follow me.”  Supposing I said that on Sunday to the people at Christ the King…”  “Take up your cross and follow mighty Dibble.”   What???  But, Jesus says it.  Where did he get the nerve?  Unless he was—what he says he was!  And, shortly before he died he said, this is Jesus Christ, no wimp, said, “Where two or three of you are gathered together in my name, I am right there in the middle of you”—like now—like at Mass.  

(BUZZARD) “Alright, are you finally shutting up, you big pocket of untapped natural gas?” 

Yes, but we have one more point. 

(BUZZARD) “Yeah, we have one more point.  What the Hell!” 

What did you say? 

(BUZZARD) “What the Hell!”  

You’re in church! 

(BUZZARD “It’s a perfectly good Anglo-Saxon prose.  What-the-Hell!  What does this have to do with tomorrow, with Monday?  You like acronyms…

MARA is an acronym: Monday always runs around. 

(BUZZARD) What the Hell does all this little preaching on Sunday got to do with what these people face on Monday?  Bills and worries, and mortgages, and houses and tuition—broken hearts.  Oh, you don’t care about broken. . .

Be quiet! MARA is a Latin word, it means bitter, hard to take, rough, Monday always runs around.  Okay, now listen, ‘Buz, I’m going to try to give you one example:  Today’s gospel is about somebody who is deaf.  Many years ago.  A married couple came in to see a priest on a planet far far away and they said to the priest, we love each other but we don’t really like each other any more.  And the wife said, “I don’t hear him anymore,” and the husband said, “I’ve been deaf to her for years.”  And they were both Catholics who went to Mass. 

So, this naive, dumb, stupid priest, said, “Why, if you’ve got any faith, don’t you just pray together, just once, ‘Lord open our ears, let me not indict her, let her not indict me, let us just talk and I’ll say how I feel.  I feel hurt when you say or do this…and she won’t say, you did this, you deliberately did this to hurt and wound me.  She’ll say, I feel wounded, I feel puzzled.”  Maybe those two could try it. 

(BUZZARD) “Well, what’s the point?” 

The point is they did try it.  Now what I want to say to you, ‘Buz, is that supposing I’ve got to talk in six Masses, all Priests have to when they have to talk, six masses, maybe one person at one of the six Masses will say, “Okay, I’ll give it a try.  I’ll give it a try for somebody I love or care about, a kid or even somebody at work…maybe somebody under my own roof, maybe, not an e-mail, a little letter, or a call to some relative, or a walk…silly and as silly as it sounds, maybe I’ll try it…open the ear, I’ve been so quiet and so deaf for so long.” 

(BUZZARD) “Oh, that’s so sweet, I need an insulin injection.  You’ve going to make me start to cry.  Do you really think that people are going to be that . . . “  It worked once.

Timer goes off:  That’s the timer.  Anyhow, if any one of you has wanted to breakthrough a certain deafness or a certain opening of the ear, when you come to the Eucharist-- speaking of the Eucharist, one last story:  There is a great old movie with Maggie Smith, it’s a great old British movie called, “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne.”  She’s an Irish spinster, middle aged, lost her job, drinks too much, a guy recently broke her heart, but she’s a Catholic and she’s had a couple of drinks and one lonely afternoon in Dublin she totters down the main isle of a Catholic Church in Dublin and she goes up to the tabernacle (that square box) and she bangs on it, and she screams: “Are you deaf, are you  there, Jesus Christ, do you really hear me?  Are you present?”  Now, the priest studied the theology of the Eucharist for six months, transubstantiation, consubstantiation, “…under the appearance of bread and wine, Jesus Christ is truly present.”  It isn’t just a wafer; there is some real presence of Christ.  And I saw this movie in New York years ago and I thought, “I studied all that stuff about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, now I really get it.  That’s real belief, it isn’t just a wafer.”  When you go to communion talk to him, “open my ears.”  Get the point? 

(BUZZARD) “I don’t get anything; you’re still a bald, unattractive piece of…”  Excuse me just a minute. . . “Let go of me…what are you doing?” 

Dibble and Buzzard exit with Dibble’s hands around Buz’ throat!