SEPTEMBER 9^th 2012, TWENTY THIRD SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

GOSPEL: Mark 7:31-37

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

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Once again Don Fabio asks us to apply this reading directly to ourselves. We are all deaf mutes insofar as we listen only to the promptings of our own egos and speak only in reference to the things that interest us. To break through the barriers of selfish isolation that we have built around ourselves, the Lord needs to place his fingers in our ears and his saliva on our tongues. This symbolizes our need to open our senses to the way in which the Lord wishes to speak to us. The Lord must open our closed lines of communication and enable us to speak his words rather than the words that flow from ourselves.

A healing that takes place in a pagan context: how relevant is that for us today?

To understand this passage we must pay attention to the geographical context in which it unfolds. The cities of Tyre and Sidon were outside of Israel and were located in an area dominated by paganism and the worship of multiple Gods. In this place Jesus performed an act of healing that has an important role in the Gospel of St Mark. We must ask: why was this particular action of Jesus remembered by the early Church and written down in the Gospel? Not all of the words or actions of Jesus were written down, only those that had a particular significance for the early church. This passage tells the story of a deaf mute who lived in a pagan city. The people take him to Jesus to be healed, but Jesus does not lay his hands on him immediately. He takes the man apart, away from the crowd. In order for this man to be healed, he must be taken out of his familiar surroundings. This is a significant point. Learning to live like a child of God is not an everyday event. Having our means of communication with others healed is not an everyday event. It involves a process of being extracted from the daily mechanism of our lives and our familiar comfort zone.

We are all deaf mutes insofar as we listen only to our own needs and speak only to ourselves

A deaf mute is someone who cannot hear or speak. We encounter deaf mutes every day. Many times in our lives we ourselves are deaf mutes, people who do not know how to speak or how to listen, people whose lines of communication are always busy, whose lines of communication are totally occupied with themselves, people who listen only to themselves and think only of themselves. The deaf mute, in this existential sense, has difficulty being truly present to others. Even if he is physically present, his lines of communication are so occupied with himself that he is not fully in attendance with others. How many people exist in this state! How many people are in desperate need to have their means of communication healed. Many of us find ourselves regularly in a condition where no one can say anything to us that will make an impression on us because we are so full of ourselves. And when we speak, we speak only of things that interest or preoccupy us. Our egos bind us within ourselves and create a solitude that is comparable to that of the deaf mute.

States of solitude or despair are often the occasions when we finally start listening to God

To heal us, Jesus must take us far away from the crowd, far away from the environment that is familiar to us. The Lord often does this, even if we don’t ask him. We find ourselves lost and alone. We ask ourselves why we are not part of the crowd, why no one speaks to us or seems interested in us. Very often unhappiness or unease is the road to change and renewal. Often, being cut off from our familiar comfort zone leads us to start reasoning in a more enlightened way about the state of our own lives. We begin to truly listen.

          Jesus places his fingers in the ears of the deaf mute, and puts saliva on his tongue. We would not be inclined to allow anyone to put their fingers in our ears or saliva on our tongues! What is the significance of these strange acts? The fingers of Jesus are the fingers of the God who comes to us in the form of Jesus. The “finger of God” refers always to the work of God. To have the work of God placed in our ears signifies to open our senses to the divine order. It signifies to start listening to reality and to stop being preoccupied with our own works, to stop being preoccupied with our own faults and failings.

What does it take for us to start feeling the finger of God in our ears? St Clare of Assisi is supposed to have said, “If one of the sisters breaks a dish, I get annoyed, but if the convent starts falling in around us, then I sit down and start listening, because that is God speaking”. When things get too much for us, God is speaking to us; God’s finger is in our ear, and we must stop being preoccupied with our own works and start asking ourselves what the Lord is doing. We must begin to bow down before the works of God, start listening to his word, pay attention to the stories regarding his works and his deeds. Very often in the spiritual life, before we start talking, we must place ourselves in no-man’s land where we refrain from talking about ourselves and listen to the stories about God’s works. In this way we begin to develop new points of reference for our lives.

I need the saliva of Jesus on my tongue. I need to start speaking with his words, and not words that come from preoccupation with my own ego

The idea of having someone else’s saliva on my tongue is slightly disturbing. But every time we sit down to pray we have someone else’s saliva on our tongues, in the sense that we have the words of others on our tongues. When we pray, we often use prefabricated words like the psalms. Sometimes we complain about praying with prefabricated prayers, but the essential point is that we need words on our mouths that do not come from ourselves and our own preoccupations. I need the saliva of Christ in my mouth. I need the word of God to fill my mouth so that I can speak with his words. I need words that are not my own, for I am deaf and listen only to myself. I am dumb and talk only of myself.

The road to healing for the deaf mute involves moving away from the crowd. He must be touched with the works of God in the interior of his ears and on his tongue. Jesus utters the word, “Ephphatha!” which means “Be opened!” The last part of the rite of Baptism involves touching the ears and mouth of the child, and this action which Jesus performs on the deaf mute is truly baptismal. We cannot take possession of the new life of baptism if we have not seriously listened to the words of God, and taken the words of God into our mouths. I encourage the readers to find the opportunity to distance themselves from their own thoughts and fixations, to distance themselves from the slavery to their own egos, so as to be able to listen and to speak according to the Lord. This is what breaks the solitude of the deaf mute and rescues us from slavish preoccupation with ourselves.