Our readings today call us to re-examine what God has done for us in the past, to be open to what God is doing in our midst right now, and to have faith and hope for what God will do for us in the future.
In the first reading, as Isaiah wrote, Babylonian exile was coming to an and. Isaiah was preaching God’s love and the need for hope, hope for a new existence and freedom in the promised land. There was a light shining brightly at the end of the tunnel. There were new possibilities and new experiences on the horizon: “Be strong, fear not” is His message for the exiles and for each one of us!
For James in the second reading, there is a message of hope for the poor. To be poor seemed to be a curse; but James told his listeners that to be poor meant that one was “An heir to the Kingdom of God”: this what seemed to be disaster – to be poor – was not what it appeared to be.
In the Gospel, Jesus restores hearing to a deaf man. The Kingdom of God had come! The blind were seeing; the deaf were hearing; the lame were leaping and the dumb were singing. The day Isaiah longed for in the Old Testament era had finally come; in the person of Jesus Christ the Old Testament promises were being fulfilled!
In the Gospel today, Jesus met a man who was deaf. The man was probably afraid because his deafness and speech impediment had ostracized him from others; his disability kept him in isolation; he was difficult to understand, he was afraid of trying to speak in public because he would be laughed at. Jesus took the man away from the crowd, touched his tongue and commanded: “Be opened!” The man was able to hear and began to speak clearly, and he was freed from his silent prison, and freed from his fear.
The deaf man in today’s Gospel was born with his disability; but there is a kind of spiritual deafness that people can drift into and become comfortable with. That is the reason why Saint Mark included this miracle in his Gospel. The people in the early church needed to hear this story. They were facing persecution by the civil authorities for their faith in Jesus Christ. They needed to be freed from their fear so that they could preach Christ crucified – openly and clearly – by word and deed. “Be opened!” Was the liberating message of Jesus to them in their need; “Be strong! Fear not!”
Saint Mark also recorded the healing of the deaf man for the benefit of each one of us. Many of us today have “hearing problems”. We claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, but sometimes live as though we never even heard of Him. His teachings are turned on and off like a faucet in the kitchen or flushed away like garbage into the sewer. How easily we hear what we want to hear and believe what we want to believe!
“Be opened!” Is what Jesus saying to us today. Be cured of the blindness that prevents you from seeing the truth and the light. Be cured of the deafness that closes your hearts to the teaching of Jesus and His church. Be cured of your lameness which hinders you from walking in the footsteps of the one who said, “I am the way, the truth and the life”. Jesus came to say to each one of us: “Ephphatha!” “Be opened!” Look beyond the physical healing of the man in the Gospel today and see the transforming power of God’s love for Him. In the midst of all the limitations and hurts we have experienced in our lives, in the midst of the hands of the clock ticking toward our encounter with Christ in judgement in the moment of our death, with the man in the Gospel today, we put our faith and trust in god’s promise that; all is worthwhile, that the power of God’s love is working in our lives to transform sorrow into joy, and sickness into health; death into new life.
God wants all of us to understand that: the future is open for each one of us; that he is leading us our pilgrimage to the house of our father; that as the present moment spills into the future, he is offering us the fullness of eternal life. The transforming resurrection power of God who loves us will have the last word!
“Ephitha!” “Be opened!”