Mark
7, 31-37
6th
Trinity August
As
he was again leaving the region around Tyre [tir], he went through the
country around Sidon [si’don] to the Sea of Galilee in the middle of the
region of the ten cities of the Decapolis. They brought to him one who was deaf
and who spoke with difficulty, and asked him to lay his hands on him. And he
led him apart from the crowds by himself, laid his finger in his ears, and
moistening his finger with saliva, touched his tongue, and looking up to the
heavens, sighed deeply and said to him, “Ephphata, be opened.” His hearing was
opened and the impediment of his tongue was removed and he could speak
properly. And he commanded them not to say anything to anyone. But the more he
forbade it, the more they widely they proclaimed it. And the people were deeply
moved by this event, and said, “He has changed all to the good: the deaf he
makes to hear and the speechless to speak.
6th August
Trinity
August 26, 2012
Mark 7: 31-37
The ear is formed in a spiral. Sounds whirl in ever
tightening circles through the inner organ of hearing. This movement is an
incarnational one; it generates words; it generates thought and meaning, which
can then spiral outward again as creative speech.
The deaf mute is someone who is hindered in this process. He
can neither take in words and their meaning, nor create them. Such a hindrance
also cuts one off from one’s community. It tends to generate fears and
suspicions in the soul. It hinders the exercising of our highest human
function: objective thought, creative speech. Even without an organic problem,
we can be mind deaf, heart sick, soul mute.
Christ’s healing consists of an intimate quality of touch.
With His fiery words, ‘Be opened’, he opens the man’s ears, loosens his tongue,
opens his soul. He restores to him his full human capacities—open senses, open
heart and mind, open speech. He goes from being imprisoned within himself to
being able to spiral outward again. He is healed of his illness.
We too suffer from “the sickness of sin”, the sickness of
the human condition. But even this illness is there to create new capacities.
In the words of John O’Donohue,
When the reverberations of shock subside in you,
May grace come to restore you to balance.
May it shape a new space in your heart
To embrace this illness as a teacher
Who has come to open your life to new worlds.
May you use this illness
As a lantern to illuminate
[1]
John
O'Donohue, "A Blessing for a
Friend on the Arrival of Illness", In To Bless the Space between Us, p. 60
