In the healing in today’s Gospel we can see the healing that our Lord wishes to perform in our souls.

Homily for Mark 7:31-37 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Sept. 6th 2009

Today in all of the readings and prayers of the Holy Mass we hear a call to hope and to absolute confidence in the Lord. In and through Jesus Christ all mankind can now find healing and the inexhaustible springs of grace flowing from His pierced heart, a pierced heart still present to us through the miracle of the Holy Mass--in fact the Holy Eucharist is the pierced Heart of Christ. The grace flowing from this pierced Heart, converts the whole world into a new creation in and through Christ. The Lord has transformed everything including men’s souls, at least those who open their hearts to His.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus performs a miracle- he opens the ears of a deaf man and heals his speech impediment. Jesus reaches out in compassion to this poor man, revealing to those who witness the miracle His divine power…Jesus raises His eyes to heaven, and says to the man, “Ephpheta!” (That is, Be opened) and at once the man’s ears where opened; he was freed from the impediment, and began to speak plainly.
As could be imagined, the people who witnessed this were astonished. They wondered who this Jesus might be. They all knew the book of Isaiah well and knew the prophecy we heard in our first reading; so the thought in their minds was, “could Jesus be the messiah?” They knew the miracle was a sign of the fulfillment of the prophecy and it raised their expectations of Jesus being the long promised Messiah. And it awakened their hope in God’s promises. God was indeed was fulfilling everything He had promised.
Let us look closer at this miracle and discover what it means for us. A person who is deaf and cannot speak is unable to really communicate with others. A loss of hearing is very isolating, some say even more so than losing ones sight. They are usually left out of conversations and activities because they cannot hear what’s being said. Hearing lost can cause depression, fear and even more so than isolation from others, isolation from God Himself resulting in a loss of hope.
I think probably even tougher than not begin able to hear, is not being able to talk. I have had experience with those who have suffered a stroke. Again, it must be a very isolating and lonely place. A person wants to talk, wants to communicate with those he loves, the words are right there in his mind, but the words and ideas just won’t come out right or won’t come out at all. How incredibly isolating this must be.
I am sure then; it was the same for the man we read in today’s Gospel-try to put yourself in his shoes. He must have been very alone and isolated, living as it were separated from family and friends. Jesus comes in and heals these afflictions and the man is not only healed of the hearing loss and speech impediment, but he is now able to be united with his family and friends, to communicate with them and tell them with his own voice that he loves them and to be able to hear them say they love him in return. He begins to have hope again.
As important as the reunion with his family and friends must have been, even more importantly was his being reunited as it were, with God. More important than his physical healing, Jesus heals this man’s relationship with God. This man can now actually hear the voice of God Himself, Jesus, and so receive the truth needed to be saved, that is the teachings of God from Jesus’ own lip. However, not only can he hear Jesus audible voice, but he can hear the voice of God and His Word in his soul. Jesus heals the man’s isolation from God caused by an impediment of the man’s soul and by healing his soul, Jesus restores the man’s supernatural hope. Through the healing of grace, received from Jesus, this man can now receive the Word of God and through the same grace speak the Word of God in thought, word and deed.
We may not have any physical problem with our hearing or our ability to speak, but do we have a problem with our spiritual hearing and speech. In other words, do we truly listen and allow the Word of God to penetrate us and to transform us, to change us? For all of us, we may develop, however slowly, a deafness in our receiving the Gospel and a muteness in speaking the Gospel; the noise and clamor of the world can drown out the whisper of God and we can only have the things and cares of this world ever in our ears and on our lips.
We can allow ourselves to be deaf to Jesus’ call to conversion in our daily live and so lose our ability to speak and even more importantly lose our ability to live the Gospel we have heard (remember, we speak the truth more by living it than by preaching it). So the Church in the prayers of her sacraments constantly reminds us of our need to ask God for the grace of healing of our ears, of our hearts and minds, so we can speak the truths of the Gospel to others with our mouths and more importantly with our actions.
In the earliest times of the Church’s life, and even till today, the Church in administering her sacraments which dispense the healing power of Jesus, of God, uses the same gestures that Jesus used in today’s Gospel. At the moment of baptism, the priest prays over the one to be baptized, or should I say Jesus through the priest prays over the one to be baptized, and He uses the priest’s finger to make a sign of the cross over their mouth and ears, saying, “May the Lord Jesus who made the deaf hear and the dumb speak, grant that at the proper time you may hear his Word and proclaim the Faith.”
And today at this Mass, and at every Mass, just before the Gospel was proclaimed we made the sign of the cross on our forehead, on our lips and over our heart. Hopefully we thought about what this gesture means and why we do it just before the proclamation of the Gospel. The signing is a plea to the Lord for the grace each one of us absolutely needs in order to allow the Word of God to be always on our minds, on our lips and in our hearts. And more deeply it means that Gospel should be deeply rooted in our very person, penetrating and renewing the faculties of our soul, of our very being. The listening to the Word of God, each and every week at Sunday Mass and in our daily reading of it should change us; it has the power to do so if we let it. It should penetrate our hearts and minds so we can live what we have heard: in thought, in word and in deeds; but we have to commit ourselves to doing so. Recall what we pray during the Confiteor- “I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts, and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do”. The reading and taking into ourselves as our own the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the antidote or cure for our sins of commission and omission. We receive the Gospel so we can be healed of our sins and begin to live what Jesus asks us to live. We allow it to take root in us, to affect the way we live each day, less we become hearers of the Word only and not doers of the Word, thus deceiving ourselves.
In the healing in today’s Gospel we can see the healing that our Lord wishes to perform in our souls. He frees this man from sin, He opens his ears to hear the Word of God and loosens his tongue to praise and proclaim the marvelous works of God. We all need Jesus to heal us from the ways we have closed off ourselves from receiving the Gospel. We need him to come with his compassion and heal the inner deafness and muteness that creeps into our lives in order to free our hearing to listen to His words, to loosen our tongues in order to announce His words, His teachings, His truths, to the world by what we say and do. St. Augustine, in commenting on this passage of the Gospel, says that the tongue of someone united to God will speak of the Good, will bring to agreement those who are divided, will console those who weep. God will be praised, Christ will be announced…And I would add, Hope will be restored.
In this Holy Mass, as we receive the Word of God become flesh in the Holy Eucharist, along with His pierce heart still flowing out blood and water, the source the sacramental life of the Church, let us ask Him, Jesus-God Himself, to do heal us. We are like the deaf and mute man in our Gospel today- we need Jesus to take compassion on us. Jesus, the healer of our deafness, of our muteness, of our souls, is truly present in the tabernacle and in just a short while on this Altar, let us surrender ourselves to Him, because the doctor can’t heal you unless you come to him and Jesus can’t heal you unless you come to Him fully and with faith, not only in body but with your whole heart, mind and soul as well…If you only knew how much Jesus loves you in the Blessed Sacrament, you would die of happiness.” (Point to the tabernacle) Jesus is really there!!!
God Bless you!!!