Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 6, 2015
Cycle B
by Rev. Jose Maria Cortes, F.S.C.E.
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Sunday Reading Meditations
In the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus heals a deaf man brought to him by people who begged for a miracle. Jesus left the crowd with the deaf man. It is very curious that Jesus wanted to be alone with the man. What was going to happen was something personal, between the two of them. This means that there is a need for a kind of solitude in order for Jesus to act. We need to reserve a space in our hearts that is only for Christ. Jesus touched the man’s ears and tongue and said: “Ephphatha!”—which means “be opened!” And the miracle happened! From that moment, a new world was opened to the man, the world of sounds, harmony and music. Now, he could hear voices, birds singing, songs and people calling his name!
In the sacrament of Baptism, there is a rite where the celebrant touches the ears and mouth of the child, saying: “The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the dumb speak. May he soon touch your ears to receive his word and your mouth to proclaim his faith.” This repetition of Jesus’ gesture of healing during the sacrament of Baptism is not to cure our physical deafness but rather the spiritual deafness caused by sin.
Spiritual deafness impairs our ability to listen to the Lord’s voice. As Jesus’ contemporaries asked for the healing of the deaf man, we need to ask to be cured of our spiritual deafness.
This week, I was surprised by what Pope Benedict said at the general audience in Rome and found a connection between today’s Gospel and the Pope’s remarks about prayer: “[…] prayer is, above all, a listening to God Who speaks. Engulfed as we are by so many words, we are little used to listening and, especially, to adopting an interior and exterior attitude of silence so as to attend to what the Lord wishes to say to us (Pope Benedict XVI).”
God’s voice is discreet; it is like “a light murmuring sound” (1 Kgs 19:12). If we are distracted, we are not aware of its presence. God’s voice is discreet and requires intimacy to be heard.
We need to regain the ability to listen because, as Saint Paul says: “Faith comes from what is heard” (Rom 10:17). This means that faith is a dialogue. The first condition for dialogue is silence. To have a dialogue, we need to be aware of the presence of the other. Silence is more than the absence of noise. It is an openness of heart. It is an acceptance of what the other wants to say to me.
To listen to God’s voice is to enter into a new dimension of being. God’s voice brings us the deepest understanding of life. It makes our lives more fruitful. God’s voice brings us the hope and meaning that we need for living.
In our times, the Church and the world need people who listen to God. At a time of confusion, the listeners of the Word are like stars that shine in the firmament.
Let us ask Jesus to open our hearts, to conquer everything that does not allow us to listen to him and to help us proclaim what we have heard!
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.