Sep 4, 2021
Be Opened!
Letting Jesus heal us from our infirmities
We come to witness this Sunday a miracle by Jesus, but strikingly different from his many other works.
We often read of Jesus’ miracles being done by mere words, meaning, out of a simple command. Yet, so striking in this Sunday is how tactile and physical his ways are. He first took the man off by himself away from the same crowd that brought him to the Decapolis, begging Our Lord to cure him.
It might seem strange for him to do that, to take him away. It begs one to wonder why. He could have cured the person right in front of everyone. He What could be the people’s motive for bringing this deaf-mute to Our Lord? Perhaps Our Lord sensed something that was amiss, or he had a very specific reason for wanting to do it away from the crowd. Perhaps it was for the deaf-mute’s sake. We could only surmise.
It gets even better from there. Christ places his finger in the man’s ears, spits and touches his tongue, looks up to heaven, groans in prayer, and ends it by commanding to the young man,
“Ephphata!”
Christ veers away from performing the miracle through a simple command. He goes above and beyond in this act of healing. His actions more concrete, more intimate, even directed not towards him, but towards the Father who is in heaven. It is an act so intimate, so personal, that it shows not just a healing of physical infirmities, but a healing that penetrates even the very recesses of the soul and the life of the person. It does so in a very powerful, and perhaps a completely indescribable way, that the man could not hold it in, even as he was instructed by Our Lord to keep it to himself. He lets others know of what happened. In fact, Mark uses the word “proclaim”, treating the very act of healing as a good news that one cannot help but to share.
How many times are we like the deaf-mute? How many times are we deaf to Our Lord’s call to us? Christ never stops calling to us, speaking to us, reaching out to us.
Aside from that, Christ often longs for us to speak to him. Christ longs for us to constantly communicate with him in our prayers, in our daily works, in the Sacraments, in all aspects of our day-to-day living.
Yet here we are. The further we are from him, the more deaf and mute we become. And the more deaf and mute we are, the more we need to run to our Lord, to not hesitate to go back to him, let him touch us, pray for us, and command us to be opened to him once more.
We may stumble at times, revert to our old ways, go back to being deaf and mute once more.
But it is never a reason to stay that way for as long as we live.
The invitation for us to go back to Our Lord so he may heal us of our infirmities is always open. It’s now just a question of us accepting ad embracing that invitation.
Maybe it’s our struggles, our problems, our imperfections, our sins,, our challenges, our own failures, our very selves that seem to hinder us from coming to Our Lord. Maybe it’s these things that make us deaf and mute to him.
Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. What matters is we do not let our being “deaf-mute” bind us and hold us down. Our Lord is also Lord of all our circumstances. We simply have to allow him to take us away from whatever is crowding our lives so he could truly manifest himself in our lives.
We also have to allow him to touch us, to spit on us. There is no aspect of the Lord that cannot heal us from our infirmities. Maybe we need to let the Lord touch us, heal us, not only physically, but in all the other aspects of our lives. Our Lord’s touch is as real as it gets. We also have to allow him to pray for us, to intercede for us to the Father, the loving Son that he is.
As we embrace that healing that Christ works in our lives, we are all the more compelled by the good that we have experienced to share it, to proclaim it, to let it be known. We allow and let Christ manifest in our lives, that others may see it. We witness to the healing power and goodness of Our Lord through our lives.
It is possible, definitely possible. We just have to allow Christ to open our eyes and ears, heal our being deaf and mute.
Let’s be opened together.
Ave Maria!
