September 6^th 2015.  TWENTY THIRD SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

GOSPEL:  Mark 7:31-37

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

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

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GOSPEL:  Mark 7:31-37

Returning from the district of Tyre, Jesus went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, right through the Decapolis region. And they brought him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they asked him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, put his fingers into the man’s ears and touched his tongue with spittle. Then looking up to heaven he sighed; and he said to him, ‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.’ And his ears were opened, and the ligament of his tongue was loosened and he spoke clearly. And Jesus ordered them to tell no one about it, but the more he insisted, the more widely they published it. Their admiration was unbounded. ‘He has done all things well,’ they said, ‘he makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.’

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . Both the first reading and the Gospel speak of the healing of the senses. God made us for communion with himself and others. But we are fixated with our own wellbeing and gratification, and this leads us to become entrapped within ourselves. How many people nowadays find it difficult to communicate with others, even people in their own families! We prefer to have virtual relationships, to spend our time being bombarded with images, instead of entering into real relationships with those around us. But God made us for relationship! Our being is damaged by the solitude and isolation of this individualistic lifestyle. Jesus wishes to heal us of this incapacity of our senses. In the Gospel he places his finger in the man’s ear, and touches the man’s tongue with his saliva. Jesus’ hand is the hand of God, the hand that made the cosmos. This symbolic act of placing his finger in the man’s ear tells us that God wishes us to be attentive to his works. Instead we tend to be fixated with our own works and our own projects. Our senses are healed by being attentive to the works of God. The touching of the man’s tongue with Jesus’ saliva is symbolic of the fact that we only learn to speak well when we speak the words of God, when our speech is informed by the Spirit of God. Jesus then says “Ephphatha! – Be opened!” It is Jesus’ fervent desire that we be released from our darkness and solitude. He is the only one that can free us – an act of the will on our part will never be enough – we must look to him.

We are made for communion with God and others. This requires our senses to be open to God and others, not directed towards our own wellbeing
Both the first reading and the Gospel this Sunday have the theme of the healing of the senses. Our five senses are the interface by which we communicate with reality. In the reading from the prophet Isaiah, we hear of what is known as the “promise of divine retribution”. This retribution is a response to the fact that the human has failed to enter into right relationships with others. The passage from Isaiah states that the blind will see, the deaf will hear, and the tongues of the dumb will sing for joy. What does the adventure of life consist in? Physical wellbeing? Enjoyment of life? No. We are born to enter into relationship with God and others. The authentic truth about us consists in the state of our relationships with others. What truly counts in life is our actual condition of communion with others. We can possess wonderful physical gifts, but yet be illiterate when it comes to relationships with others, unable to detach ourselves from the anxiety concerning our individual wellbeing. Our being was made for relationship and it is destroyed if we do not learn to enter into relationship.

We are made for love and communication, but we barricade ourselves inside virtual worlds. We become deaf mutes, focussed on our individualistic goals and gratifications
We are made for love, but love is impossible without the senses. Unless we can see, or hear, or touch, or perceive, we cannot enter into relationship with others. Solitude is that which really frustrates and destroys human life. But in today’s world we are so focussed on individualism that we often begin to live lives of great solitude. The emphasis on personal wellbeing distances us from others. The healing of the senses becomes all the more critical when we consider that the modern ways in which the senses can be subject to illusion. Our senses are bombarded with data that is virtual in nature. This anaesthetises the senses and make us blind, dumb and mute. Many young people are trapped within virtual relationships. These tend to be less risky and to be dominated by personal projections, making it more difficult to enter into genuine relationships with real people. These cases are widely diffused and of greater or lesser gravity, but the upshot is that the person becomes effectively a deaf mute, existentially autistic, trapped within themselves. All of us are in this situation to some degree. Do I seek times of the day when I can be alone and engage in an activity that rewards me in an individualistic way? Like time in front of the TV, time spent on the internet or time reading a book. In other words, times when I don’t have to relate to anyone else. Is life just a boring parenthesis between one moment of self-gratification and another? Between one moment of rest from relationships and another? The effort to understand another person and to make myself understood becomes tiresome and boring. This tendency to isolate myself is the work of the separator, the demon who separates us from others and makes us incapable of communication. He closes us within ourselves and causes us to make absolutes of our sensations.

Jesus wishes to heal our senses. He wishes us to be attentive to discerning his works and to learn to speak with his words. Attention to his works frees us from our fixation with ourselves and permits us to communicate his word to others.
Jesus wishes to cure this solitude of ours. How does he do it? In the Gospel passage, Jesus is in a pagan region, a paganism that leads ultimately to solitude. First he takes the afflicted man apart, away from the crowd with its facile solutions for everything. Then he performs two actions that seem repulsive or embarrassing. He puts his fingers in the man’s ears and his saliva on the man’s tongue. These are symbolic actions. The fingers represent the works of Christ. The heavens and the earth were made by the hand of God and Jesus is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. The man is being given the capacity to listen to the works of another, to comprehend the works of God. Then he places the saliva on the tongue. We cannot speak without saliva and Jesus is giving the man the capacity to speak with the words of Jesus. To listen to the works of another and to speak with the words of another: this is what heals the human being of his ills. It is essential that we be nurtured with the word of God which relates to us the works of the Lord. Attention to the works of God frees us from the fixation with our own works which entraps us. God does things that we do not expect whilst our own ways of measuring are very limited. Attention to the works of God gives us a capacity to speak in a new way and respond according to his wisdom.

It is only Jesus that can lead us out of this entrapment within ourselves

Jesus sighs and says, “Ephphatha” which means “Be opened”. This is a command from the Lord. It is not something that can be achieved with our own power. It is the will of God that we be opened. We are called by the will of God to be opened and to escape from our entrapment within ourselves. It is not something that happens as a result of an act of our will. Jesus sighs, an indication of the longing of his spirit that we should be liberated from our darkness and solitude. He wants us to speak, to listen, to enter into relation. How many people are enclosed within themselves and think that the solutions to their problems lies within themselves! Instead, a focus on oneself will only lead to greater entrapment. The solution is in opening oneself to God and others. This Sunday let us repeat to ourselves the command of Jesus that we find in this Gospel: “Be opened! Come out and enter into relationship with me!”