Be opened!

This week, we read about a very human and moving encounter between Jesus and a man who was both unable to hear and unable to speak

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As we continued our journey through St. Mark’s Gospel, we read about a very human and moving encounter between Jesus and a man who was both unable to hear and unable to speak properly (Mark 7:31-37). Jesus heals him on every possible level. Our First Reading (Isaiah 35:4-7) reminds us that such healings are a true sign of the presence of the Messiah. St. Mark is, therefore, telling us in the account of this healing that the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled in Jesus. Additionally, we read that Jesus entered the Decapolis region. The Decapolis was a group of 10 cities east and south of the Sea of Galilee. The cities had a very mixed population, mainly of Romans and Greeks rather than Jews. This is a significant detail, in that Jesus gives this miraculous healing in a Gentile area rather than a Jewish one. God’s love and healing extends to everyone, not just a few.

Another detail in St. Mark’s account is the care that Jesus takes in this healing. He takes the man away from the crowd so that he does not feel part of some sort of spectacle. It is a one-on-one encounter, personal and intimate. Then Jesus does something extraordinary. He could have stretched out his hand and simply said, “You are healed.” In fact, the crowd asked Jesus just to lay his hand on the man. He has and will do this elsewhere. Instead, he puts his fingers into the man’s ears and, spitting, touches the man’s tongue. St. Mark wants us to understand the significance and beauty of this. For example, it is one of those rare occasions where the original Aramaic word “ephphatha” (be opened) is retained in his account of Jesus’ words after those two gestures.

As you may imagine, people have speculated as to why Jesus healed the man in this way. For one thing, the man was deaf, and so perhaps Jesus wanted him to feel what Jesus was doing for him. The power of touch is potent indeed. St. Ephrem puts it beautifully:

“The deaf-mute healed by Christ felt our Lord’s fingers of flesh touch his ears and tongue, but when his ears were unstopped, he reached the inaccessible divinity of our Lord through the intermediary of this finger that his sense perceived.”

We have retained these gestures and the words “be opened” in part of the Baptismal Rites, fittingly called the Ephphatha Rite. In the early church, for those to be baptized, the bishop or priest would touch their ears and then touch their tongue with his spittle. (Well, in the current Ordo, we have moderated things a bit now by simply touching the ears and mouth, with no spittle involved!) There is, however, a beautiful prayer associated with this action in the Baptism of Children:

“May the Lord Jesus, who made the deaf to hear and the mute to speak, grant that you may soon receive his word with your ears and profess the faith with your lips, to the glory and praise of God the Father.”

This mention of baptism can also remind us of a second reason some give for these gestures of healing that Jesus performs in the healing of the man. They are very “earthed” or physical gestures. Every sacrament uses physical and tangible things (bread, wine, oil, water) and gestures to be a vehicle of the grace that God bestows in that sacrament. This makes perfect sense when we remember that we are, after all, physical beings!

There is, of course, yet another level of meaning in our reflection on this wonderful healing of the man. So many spiritual writers draw a parallel between this healing and our need for healing. There are many times when we can be spiritually deaf to God’s word and calling. In doing so, we become deaf to the Lord himself. Similarly, the gift of speaking can sometimes be misused: what we might call a spiritual speech impediment. For example, we have that saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but your words cannot harm me.” What nonsense! Instead, we should ensure that our speech is always pure and good, creating and not destroying.

Returning to the Sacrament of Baptism, we can note the following sound reminder that St. Ambrose gives in his commentary on the Mysteries:

“Open your ears, then, and take in the sweetness of eternal life which has been breathed upon you by the gift of the sacraments. This is what we indicated to you when, celebrating the mystery of the opening of your ears, we said, ‘Ephphatha, this is, be opened,’ so that all who were to receive grace might know what they were being asked and remember what answer they had to give.”