Homily for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

One of my favorite movies is October Sky.[1] It’s a true story about a teen named Homer Hickam who lived with his family in a coal-mining town called Coalwood in West Virginia. Homer’s father, John, was the superintendent of the mine. The mining company owned the town and everything in it, and it was pretty much expected that all the town boys would work in the mine once they graduated from high school.

Homer, however, had other plans. Inspired by the advent of the Space Race with the Soviet launch of the Sputnik in October 1957, Homer launched his plan to make something of himself and move beyond the confines of Coalwood. He gathered with three of his friends, and they decided to build rockets, get themselves into the national science fair, and win scholarships to college.

Their odyssey into rocketry began with a flashlight loaded with gunpowder attached to Homer’s mother’s new fence. An explosion left the four boys lying on the ground and Mrs. Hickam’s fence in splinters. From there, the boys worked diligently to progress toward success in rocketry and in life.

They had the help of a few of the townspeople, especially their teacher, Miss Riley, and a couple of workers in the machine shop of the coal mine. But they had their detractors, too, who only wanted to see them graduate from high school and go to work in the mine. Most notable among them were Homer’s father and the high school principal, both of whom did all they could to dissuade them from their dream. Most other people didn’t really take them very seriously.

After a couple of years, many setbacks, and much turmoil, the boys finally made it to the local science fair, which they won, and then to the national science fair in Indiana, which they also won. This guaranteed them an opportunity to leave Coalwood and go to college.

All four boys graduated from college. While only Homer went on to work in the space program, all four boys made successful lives for themselves. They did so because they refused to listen to those who didn’t believe in their dream; they didn’t let the ridicule and “nay-sayers” keep them from hearing the voice inside them that told them their goal was possible.

The story of the “Rocket Boys,” as they were called, is a story of Ephphatha — an openness to the potential that exists in every person; an openness to the greatness that these four boys, their teacher, the two mine workers, and a few others were able to draw forth from one another.

The spirit of Ephphatha is much more than that, too. It is the openness to the Spirit of God alive and at work in our midst—in our homes, our families, our schools and places of work, our roads, our churches, and our daily relationships with one another. Any and all of these situations can seem stressful to us, but the presence of God is there. And in them and through them, God is always speaking to us.

But we need to be attentive to that voice. Ephphatha is to hear the voice of God amid the noise and stress and distractions that surround us and to seek out the voice of God when everything around us becomes too much, or we feel discouraged, or cynical, or hopeless.[2]

Let us pray that “Ephphatha” may be a part of our daily lives. Being open to and hearing the Word and the presence of God enables us to be people of faith and hope and harbingers of God’s love, mercy, and compassion to all people in our world.

 

[1] October Sky, Universal Studios, Universal City, CA, 1999.

[2] Cormier, Jay, Editor, Connections, Mediaworks, Londonderry, NH, September, 2003, p.1.