From the Pastor

Ephphatha

excerpt from homily September 5, 2021

Jesus heals people. That’s one of the reasons why people followed Jesus.

(Also, of course, for handing out free lunches at the multiplication of loaves and fishes).

People came to Jesus for healing from their physical illness but most importantly from their spiritual sickness. This is the case of today’s Gospel. He heals a deaf man who also has a speech impediment.

Jesus fulfills the prophecy in the first reading we hear today: Fear not! Here is your God, he comes with divine recompense; he comes to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared”.

Deafness, in the biblical sense, is not just a physical illness. Deafness is also a spiritual issue. The inability to hear must be seen in the context of our relationship with God. The Gospel narrative about the healing of the deaf and dumb man leaves us with a lot of lessons about openness.

First: Openness to help others. The Gospel begins with some people bringing a deaf and dumb man to Jesus and begging him to lay his hand on him. The action of the unnamed people is an indication of goodwill and charity.

The Gospel of Luke presents a similar scenario where some people had to remove the roof of a house to lower down a paralyzed man to where Jesus was preaching in a crowded room so that he could heal him. We need to learn to be open to helping others.

Second: Openness to leave the "crowd mentality." Responding to the people’s request, our Lord Jesus Christ takes the man away from the crowd. The crowd here stands for all the hindering spiritual, moral, even physical elements around us. Many of us carried away by crowd mentality from social pressures. There is the need for us to stand by the Lord so that we can experience that his healing touch.

Third: Openness to break barriers. When Jesus Christ accepted to heal the deaf and dumb man, he broke the unjustifiable barrier between the able and the disabled; he bridged the gap between the well and the unwell. St. James reinforces this in the second reading where he instructs that there should be no partiality among us as we adhere to the faith in Jesus Christ. To be truly open, we need to break the social, economic, political and religious barriers that confront us.

Fourth: Openness to the healing touch of the Word of God. In the narrative, we learn that our Lord had to put his finger into the man’s ears, and says ephphatha, which means, “be opened.” Jesus’ finger acts as God’s electrical wiring or a divine hearing aid that plugs into the man’s ears so the man can hear. During this process, the man remains open and accepting. The sad reality is: we find it hard to hear God’s Word.

And why do we not hear God’s voice? Well, in the first place, because there are so many loud voices –sounds and noises – competing for our attention. Think of all the sounds and noises drowning out the voice of God: from the TV and radio, from the phones and gadgets from addictive digital or online games. The point is: we are not giving the Word of God a chance to be heard. We block our ears from God and we constantly plug in to the noises of the world. In the Bible, God speaks in silence. God speaks in the silence of our hearts and we, the modern human beings, are afraid of silence. We need to be open to the healing touch of the word of God by being still and by quieting our minds and hearts.

Finally: Openness to being open. Openness to being open requires us to listen with profound charity and speak with clarity. In the healing process, the Lord opened the ears before the mouth. It tells us about the importance of listening more than talking; that could be the reason why God gave us two ears and one mouth. We need to listen more before talking. We could apply this to our prayer life. We think prayer is only talking to God and asking God what we want. But it’s more than that. Prayer is a two-way communication, a dialogue – which means there is a time to talk and a time to listen. This open dialogue starts within our families; among couples, parents and children.

Today’s challenge is that we don’t really know how to listen anymore. Everybody talks but nobody really listens. Like the man in today’s gospel story, we have become deaf to the Word of God. And like him, we need healing. We need our ears to be touched and healed by the Lord Jesus so that we may hear God speaking to us in a personal way. “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”

Fr. Giovanni Gamas