In this world there are two types of speaker. There are those who talk
a lot, but seem to say very little for all their words. There are those, too,
who say very little, but whose every word seems filled with meaning. Jesus was
very much of the second type, and one has sometimes to listen very carefully to
him to grasp the importance of what he is saying. The Gospel of the deaf man is
very much about listening. And it
requires concentrated listening for its message to be revealed. Let us listen carefully to just one sentence: “Jesus said to the man,
‘Effata!’ that is, ‘Be opened!’ and his ears were opened.”
Jesus acts here as a prophet, one who speaks the words of God to God’s
people. And God is a God of the Word, which means that speech and
hearing are the most important part of the way in which He reveals himself to
us. “Hear the Word of the Lord!” is one of the most frequent sayings of the
Old Testament prophets. The deaf man is more than just someone who cannot hear;
he is, in Biblical terms, one who is cut off from hearing the Word of God.
Jesus’ action is a sign for us. The word of the Lord is not just sound,
but “something alive and active” It actually carries out what it says. The
deaf man hears it while he is still deaf. Jesus’ words cut
through his deafness, making him hear, and for the first time, the
world around him becomes audible.
From the story there is also little doubt that the deaf man wanted
to hear. Though he was deaf, how he must sometimes have struggled to
hear what went on around him. It was because he listened in his deafness
that he was able to hear the words of Jesus when they were addressed to him;
“Be opened!” The deaf man in today’s Gospel is not simply a deaf man; he is every
member of the human race. We are all deaf to the world without the Word of
God. We cannot really know him, or his purpose for us and his creation, until
we have heard him explaining it to us.
We all need to be hearers of the Word. And in order for us to
hear the Word of the Lord, it is necessary for us to listen out for it.
This means seeking the truth with all our hearts, and then accepting it and
obeying it when we find it. For the voice of the opens our ears to the world,
so that for the first time we are able to hear its sounds with meaning; the
meaning he has given it. And that sound, heard through ears opened to it
by God, is not a sound to put us at ease. Before the Lord opens our ears, the world
has to reach out to us, to break into our self-centredness. Now, we
have to reach out to the world and give of ourselves to it. No longer
trapped in our own silence, we have to respond to the sounds to which God
exposes us by healing our spiritual deafness. We must listen to and
respond to the cries of the desperate around us. There is work for us
in this world. We could say that, with our ears opened by the voice of the
Lord, God is at last speaking to us through the cries of the world, for
he has enabled us to hear them as he hears them.
Listen to the world; what you will hear is the cries of the spiritually
deaf; those who cannot hear his Word. And they are crying out for love. The
world today is more full of deaf people than it has ever been, people who have
not heard the Word of God, and has become a world of people who take rather
than give. But God, who opens our ears to the cries of his people, wants to
change this. He wills us to go out, filled with his inexhaustible love, and to
bring that love to others. And by that same love, he wants to use us to open
the ears of others, that they too might hear his word, and his
world, and be filled with his love, and in turn go out and fill others
with his love.
You can
be the bearer of that love; you can be the one through whom he says “Effata!”
to others, as he has said it to us all. “Lord, open our ears, that our hearts
may proclaim your love”. May it be so. Amen.
Fr Phillip
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