Sunday 23 B
5th September 2021
Is 35.4-7a
Js 2.1-5
Mk 7.31-37
It should not come as a surprise that Jesus is an expert in communication. Dealing with someone who can neither hear nor speak, He addresses His other senses. He takes Him aside from the multitude privately. Then Jesus uses His hands, more precisely His fingers, and He touches the man’s ears. Then there is the contact of his saliva with the man’s tongue. The sick man has been given to see, touch and taste how good is the Lord. He sees, he touches, he tastes the Word of God in the flesh. Finally Jesus looks up to heaven, the source of all blessings, and He sighs, as if addressing the man’s sense of smell.
Jesus speaks the language of the senses, the language of the flesh, of the Incarnation. He acts as the Creator God of the second chapter of Genesis: a potter who takes in His hands the soil of the earth and first shapes a body out of it, then puts a breath of life into it. The creation of man is a communication of meaning. It creates not only a shape, or a being, but a communicator. “Ephphatha”, “Be opened”. Maybe we would say today: ‘Un-mute yourself, we are now connected; our conversation can begin.’ God creates someone with whom He wants to have a conversation, a dialogue, an exchange. Jesus heals in order to restore the capacity to participate fully in the conversation.
We, from outside, see the fingers of the Creator, but also, symbolically, the Persons of the Trinity: Jesus, in relation with His Father toward Whom He lifts up His eyes, breathes their common Spirit of Life upon the man. This healing is like a catechesis without words for a baptism without water. Gestures, signs and symbols are enough to announce the innermost mystery of God and, at the same time, God’s amazing closeness. To be baptised is to be touched by God’s mystery of love and to be created anew, by a new Spirit of life coming from the Son of the Father who takes on Himself our miseries, who touches them in His flesh, who lets Himself be touched by our infirmities.
Unsurprisingly, there is a rite of the Effeta in the Ritual of Baptism (although it can be omitted): the celebrant touches the ears and the mouth of the child who has been baptised and says: ‘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, to the praise and glory of God the Father’.
To be baptised it to be opened to communication with God, or even, one can say, within God, within the Trinity. The baptised Christian receives the Spirit of Christ and prays: ‘Abba, Father’. He or she proclaims the faith of the Church in the One God who is Father, Son and Spirit. This opening up is a beginning. What began on the day of our Baptism has to be nourished and to grow in our Christian life. Under the guidance of the Spirit, we are led to open ourselves always more to God and to our neighbour.
In Baptism, a door is opened. We can go through it and enter the world of communication into which it opens. But we can also, sadly, ignore it (the door is open, but I do not enter; maybe I do not even know that I may enter); even worse I can close it again, at least for a while. The question is for us: ‘How far am I ready to open the door? Do I agree to keep it open, but at the same time feel too shy or too frightened to open it further and to enter the world of God? Do I, more or less consciously, put limits to how far I am ready to open it? Or do I feel ready now, or even invited now by God’s grace, to try and keep it open all the time so that God and others may enter, and I may go to God and to my Brethren? The Saints are men and women who open themselves totally to God, who let God enter their lives, and who enter ever deeper into God’s life.
Today, Jesus takes us aside, privately and He pronounces again the ‘Ephphatha’ on us: Open the door of your heart to God who opens to you the door of His Heart! Open the door to your neighbour, your brothers and sisters in Christ, and let yourself be welcomed in their home. Enter the conversation between God and Man, which is the Church. Open your ears and listen to the Word of God. Open your mouth and praise the God of life, the Creator who is Father, Son and Spirit for “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”