6th Trinity
Mark 7:31-37
As
he was again leaving the region around Tyre, he went through the country around
Sidon 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.
Julia Stankova
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 Trinity
August 30, 2020
Mark 7:31–37
As we get older, our hearing often declines. It is as though our ears close a bit. We fail to accurately pick up what was spoken to us. And so we may get a false message. And to others, our response may seem inappropriate, even humorously. Yet even if our hearing is perfect, it can be that our hearts are closed, so we don’t pick up what is really being said.
In a sense, we are all deaf. Our hearts are sometimes closed,
often in self-defense, against the overwhelming voices of pain and suffering
around us. We rarely hear the inspirations our angels are whispering to us.
We speak with difficulty. Yet our words wield enormous
creative power, for good or for ill. The poet Wislawa Szymborska makes us aware
of their power; she says,
 |
| Tissot |
When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word
Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word
Nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can
hold.*
Christ came to open our hearing, to open our hearts so that
our words have the power to create. ‘Be opened,’ he says. ‘Hear my voice in your heart.’ When you break your silence with love, you create a future which no non-being can
destroy.
*Wislawa Szymborska, “Three Oddest Words”.
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