Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Fr Dominic’s Homily

The world that we live in is noisy with so many distractions that most of us can’t hear the word of God clearly in our lives.

In a way we are all a bit like this deaf man with a speech impediment who needs to hear properly again. And if we can’t hear well in the first place then we certainly can’t speak Gods message to others.

So Jesus is walking through the Decapolis region which is composed of ten cities. It’s a place that Jesus would rarely walk through. It was known as Gentile territory - in other words the realm of the unhearing people.

People there had lost their sense of the spiritual. It was materialistic and noisy – much like our cities of today.

So they bring Jesus this man who cannot hear and cannot speak. They want him to lay his hands on him. But Jesus doesn’t do this. He could have just spoken words of healing to the man from a distance. But he doesn’t do this either.

Instead he takes the man to one side. This is going to be a private miracle. Away from the crowds. Away from the voices that surround us all vying for our attention. If we want to hear the spiritual truths of God we need to come away from the noise and distraction.

And next Jesus puts his fingers in the man’s ears and touches his tongue with spittle. Now if someone tried to do that to you, you would probably run away. But it’s obviously some ancient healing gesture from his culture that Jesus is using.

It’s almost as if Jesus, who is the true vine, is connecting himself to the man so that his power can flow into him.

Then Jesus speaks in his own Aramaic language, Ephphatha – meaning be opened. It’s very rare that Jesus uses his native Aramaic language in the gospels. He only does it 3 times.

Now the man must have certainly suffered up to that point as his life would have been lonely and insular, cut off from everything. Today we have all sorts of sign language and ways to help people in that situation.

Jesus sighed before he performed this miracle. Maybe because he grieved the suffering that this man had endured. Maybe it was the breath of the Trinity flowing into the man.

He then heals this man. Which must have been an emotional experience. The man wakes up the next day to a dawn chorus for the first time in his life. This was a supernatural experience.

It takes years of training for the tongue and mouth muscles to develop in the right way in order to produce the right sounds – and that’s also with listening to others. But for someone who has never even heard a language before it’s a miraculous event.

Jesus of course is fulfilling the prophesies that we heard in the first reading from Isaiah. Ears of the deaf will be unsealed and tongues will sing for joy. Jesus is carrying out the very miracles that Isaiah said God would perform. In this way Jesus proves who he really is.

He wants to undo the effects of the fall from Adam and Eve that had kick started all that sin, suffering and death which was overtaking humanity.

Saint Ephraim from the 3rd century speaks beautifully about this miracle.

He said that in this event we see the very architect of the human body itself and all things that have been created visiting this man personally and with a gentle voice and action he repairs what has been damaged.

The crowds of people were very impressed and the more Jesus tells them not to speak about it, of course the more they do.

And for this man who was deaf his entire life, the very first words he hears are from the mouth of Jesus saying “Be Opened! Words he would never forget.

So what does this mean for us?

Well in a certain sense, in order to truly hear God’s word we must first become deaf to the world and deaf to all the wrong voices and distractions.

And then maybe for the first time in our lives, our ears and our hearts will be truly opened.

And we will actually hear the one true voice that counts. Only then can we speak it effectively to others.