Today’s readings deal with the tragedy of not listening. In the first reading, we see the fulfillment of the warning given to Solomon. Becau...
Today’s readings deal with the tragedy of not listening. In the first reading, we see the fulfillment of the warning given to Solomon. Because of the king’s hardness of heart, the kingdom is split. Israel is plunged into a state of Estrangement, divided into North and South. This division started because one man stopped listening to the voice of God and started listening to the voices of his own desires. When we stop hearing God, we eventually stop hearing each other, and things fall apart.
In the Gospel, Jesus encounters a man who literally cannot hear. He is deaf and has a speech impediment. Jesus takes him aside, puts His fingers into the man’s Ear, and spits and touches his tongue. Then, looking up to heaven, He sighs and says, "Ephphatha"—which means "Be opened."
Immediately, the man’s ears were opened and his speech was corrected. He could finally hear the Truth and speak it clearly.
The "sigh" of Jesus is very important. It is a sigh of compassion for a humanity that has become "deaf" to the Word of God. We live in a world of noise, but how much do we truly hear? We are often deaf to the cry of the poor, deaf to the needs of our spouses, and deaf to the quiet whisper of the Holy Spirit. And because we cannot hear correctly, we cannot speak correctly—we speak words of gossip, anger, or division.
Jesus wants to perform a spiritual "Ephphatha" on each of us today. He wants to heal the "division" in our hearts just as He healed the man’s ears. But to be healed, we have to let Him take us "aside from the crowd." We need moments of silence and prayer.
As you receive the Lord today, pray for the grace to truly hear. Ask Him to open your ears to His commands and loosen your tongue to speak His praise. May we be a people who are no longer estranged from God or one another, but "opened" to the beauty of His kingdom.
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