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Homily for Wed of the 6th Wk in OT, 15 February 2023, Mk 8:22-26
There was video that went viral about the strange behavior of birds and dogs in Turkey on the night before the earthquake took place. Was there something that these animals could sense that human beings were unable to perceive? Were they picking up some warning signals that could have saved many lives if only we knew how to interpret them?
In today’s first reading, we are told how Noah used birds to be able to monitor his surroundings when the great flood began to subside. One might say they served as extra eyes for him, long before camera-drones were invented.
First, he released a raven, which, according to the storyteller, flew back and forth until the waters dried off from the earth. Next, he released a dove. It had no place to alight so it came back to the ark. He released it again after 7 days. It came back with a plucked-off olive leaf in its beak.
If only we had the humility to admit that there is still so much that we can neither see not hear around us… We are still unable to predict the exact time of occurrence of an earthquake. Unlike with typhoons, there is at least time to evacuate; we already have eyes from outer space—space satellites that are able to track down the positioning, speed and direction of a hurricane as it builds up. I hear that the same thing can be done already with volcanoes as long as people can have access to technology.
But let’s admit it, so many things around us are still so unpredictable. We did not have eyes to foresee the Covid19 pandemic. We need extra eyes that can see what is behind us while we look ahead of us, eyes above us, below us, around us. It’s what we’re doing when we install CCTVs everywhere.
But CCTV’s are mechanical. Nature has many other creatures whose eyes can do the seeing for us, if only we have not lost our connection to them. The ants, the cats, the bats, the reptiles, the dolphins and whales, they all seem to have some extra senses that we do not have. There is so much that they can tell us if only we could observe them closely, or interpret their behavior properly, they might be our best guides in knowing what is coming.
The Book of Ecclesiastes tells us “There is a time for everything, a time for every affair under the heavens.” When the dove got back to the ark with an olive leaf in its bill, Noah knew that the flood had subsided, that the trees had regrown and put forth new leaves, and that the calamity was over. It was time to come out of the ark; it was time to start all over again.
The dove with the olive leaf on its bill has therefore become a symbol of world peace. It was depicted by the Spanish Modernist painter Pablo Picasso as a symbol of world peace, and adopted by the First World Peace Congress in 1949.
When despite the advancement and sophistication of science and technology, we are brought down on our knees by calamities and disasters, it is then that we realize how blind we really are to a lot of things in this world. We need the healing touch of him who alone can open our eyes, who can empower us to see, albeit in stages—maybe vaguely at the start, and later more clearly, if we have the patience to look hard and distinguish between people and trees.
Isaiah the prophet once lamented about people who “have eyes but cannot see and ears but cannot hear.” (Isa 6:9). Our first reading tells us we need more than eyes to be able to see. We need to restore our connection with nature and other fellow creatures, with birds and dogs and insects that have many things to teach us if only we had the humility to admit how ignorant we still are about a lot of things.
I have seen blind people being guided by dogs. They say at some point the connection between the blind person and his dog becomes so strong, it’s like a man is practically able to see, hear, smell through the senses o a dog.
